Hello! To elaborate, I currently have a plan in America that I wish to keep in order to keep contact with parents / family. Currently I use an unlocked galaxy note 10 plus, with atnt.
I’m also searching around for a new phone. I’m not sure if I should buy it now, unlocked, or wait until Japan. It seems like I can’t even find the phone I want unlocked in Japan, which conerns me.
I’m worried about getting a new phone now with dual sim capabilities, and then struggling to find a phone plan that works with whatever phone I get. (I’m eyeing the galaxy note 20 (not ultra), which I can also buy unlocked).
My parents are paying for my current phone plan, which i’m grateful for, and why I don’t want to just use them for international data and charge them.
Any advice here that might help would be appreciated. As well as recommendations on how to check device compatibility. Or any specific carriers that you’d recommend.
8 comments
Wait till you get to Japan.
Your phone from the US probably won’t have all the bands needed to keep a stable 4-5G connection. (depending on your area)
You can also try sites like this one: https://willmyphonework.net/
I would grab a used one off yahoo auctions, Amazon warehouse or rakuten. In general Japanese ppl take way better care of their stuff so most used stuff is in pretty good shape.
Also should say, use LINE or WhatsApp to call them using your WiFi at home, school, hell even McDonald’s WiFi and you get free international calls 🤙
For speaking to your yet unmet Japanese friends, I recommend checking out kakaku.com for the best SIM deals. If your Japanese isn’t up to the task, a teacher will help you sort it.
Do NOT pay the 7k a month offered from sakura or mobal. I never needed the English support in almost 2 years and glad I did some research and only paid 2k yen for mine for 20GB
My partner imported the exact phone you want from Hong Kong. Unlocked, dual sim, no problems using his Malaysian and Japanese (Ahamo) sims.
Just sharing my experience. I used an iphone when I was in Japan, and my family also had iphones and I was able to stay in contact with them through imessage and facetime which is free between iphone users. Also for friends and family who didn’t have iphones, I had social media to stay in contact with them like fb messager, instagram and etc. And others have mentioned LINE and WhatsApp to stay in contact. You can stay in contact without keeping a phone plan from back home if you were interested.
I would just use Facebook Messenger, discord, WhatsApp, LINE to use wifi and contact family. International calls and texts are unnecessary when there are so many things to use instead.
Switch your current sim to an ESIM, then when u get to japan get a physical SIM card and sim a duel SIM setup. Running two phone numbers
I don’t know if this is ESID, but my placement requires a Japanese phone number to set up your bank account to receive your salary. So you would need to have a Japanese phone plan regardless.
You need a Japanese phone number for a few things here. Why do you need an American phone number when there are so many chat apps like WhatsApp etc to keep in contact? Seems pointless paying for a phone line when you’ll be living in Japan.