Phone for Japan
 

Will be going to Japan in the very near future...have both United Mobile, United Mobile+, O9 sim cards which claim they roam in Japan but of course the technology is the issue.....

Know the SE810i will work and its predecessor model the K800i will work...couple of questions

1. is there really all that much difference between the K800i and the K810i?

2. Is there anything even cheaper that has the Japanese technology + gsm900/1800/1900?

Thank you for any assistance.

Hi, MATHA531

I don't have Sony's cell phone, so I will answer your question #2.
K610i (or K600i if you don't care for memory slot) may be a bit cheaper than K800i (when looking through google's product search).
K610i apparently worked in Japan; here is a web page for the report.
http://www.aetherwide.com/articles/roamjapan.html
I am not sure whether your roaming cards will work in Japan or not. The key is UMTS 2100.

Hope you will enjoy the upcoming trip to Japan. Per my family living in Japan, it has been VERY hot and humid in Japan (particularly bad this summer!).

I have used two Motorola phones (A835 & V980) with good success in Japan. UMTS coverage is not nearly as good as PDC. I recommended to a friend that he use Celtrek and a UMTS phone in Japan. When making local calls his wife refused to use this combination because of the annoying delay in the conversation. Renting a PDC phone at the airport might be a good solution. You can rent both prepaid and postpaid phones. Check out the Narita website.