Re: N900 in Japan?
 

Thanks for that.. I did try Kimitake's QT port of the EBView, it doesnt seem to work for me with all the Scim-bridge for entering nihono in the QT app. However another QT app QStarDict works fine.

But with all the EPWing data I have, I would love to have the EBView work properly on the n900 for me.

If its not too much to ask, would you mind sharing your customized EBView tarball ( with a more visibile Search input field). I hope it is just about untarring it into /opt where the current EBView is? I would appreciate your inputs on that.

I will try this.. Actually I found this link where someone had created a neat .deb package for JP locale setup.. But the link isnot available anymore. I have wrote to the author. Would anyone here have this .deb file ..

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

I've been reading this thread enthusiastically because I'm thinking about buying a N900 myself and I live in Japan.

I currently use a Nokia E71 with Softbank. It works well except I can't write sms or mms in Japanese, but I do receive them. Sometimes they don't open in the mail app, so I have to browse through the attachments one by one, and save the text one to the sd card, then use a 3rd party app to read it. Its slow and a pain, and sometimes I can't even save the attachment at all!
The only thing I like about the E71 is battery life and its VoIP integration (this is a must for me since I use an Asterisk PBX all the time).

So the main reason for me to buy a N900 is because I'm a big linux fan and this cellphone is completely open, and uses things like v4l, pulseaudio, etc. I might even write some software for it.

I would like to know of any compatibility issues using the N900 in Japan, especially using mms: showing emoticons and animations that people use with their japanese cellphones.

Is there any other thing that I should be aware before buying the N900 for use in Japan? :confused:

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

@Shin:

Let me dig for a bit, I don't know if I still have the tarball, though I should.

Such wide character sets may not be supported, I'm not sure to what extent the N900 offers. Might require additional code and pixmaps if they're insufficient as-is. Actually getting mms messages may be harder, since this thread alone tells tales of the carriers being real damn picky (at least Softbank) about the devices they allow on, and giving out information on their servers.

This thread tells a lot of the pitfalls. If you go Softbank, the main rule seems to be "don't tell anyone what you're using." I'm not sure if DoCoMo sells sim-only access to fOma, but it works quite well with the N900.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

So, anyone have had any luck with Softbank prepaid sim cards in n900s?

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

shin: I've found an old copy of that locales file from googling however the package is seriously broken and there's no hinting as to whether or not will this be updated or not.

Link to file: http://momoyan0306.web.fc2.com/n900/...5-r294_all.deb

Installation goes fine on PR1.3, however you won't get ja_JP in the Settings > Language & region > Device language. I have dug deeper via comparing to the unofficial n900-extras-locales-zhtw from extras-devel and it seems like the file structures were either outdated or quite different. In addition to all that, it seems PR1.3 has a locale-archive for all the locales to be compiled into one big archive hence the lack of individual files inside each of the /usr/lib/locale/<lang> respectively.

I have made some small hacks with minimal success. The first attempt was to compile locale-archive to contain ja_JP as localesdef --list will show there's no ja_JP entry.
This command then adds ja_JP locale from /usr/lib/locale/ja_JP/* into the locales-archive after a few moments of giving the device the time to remake the archive.

I then backed up /opt/maemo/usr/share/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES before proceeding to copy the contents of /usr/share/locale/ja/LC_MESSAGES/* to /opt/maemo/usr/share/locale/ja/
After rebooting I was able to see the ja_JP locale written of course in kanji but sadly after rebooting when using ja_JP has lead to only English locale for all the GUI portion. Funnily enough some of the commands in terminal did get shown up with portions of Japanese characters such as wget --help, ls -l, etc.

Inevitably this is now where I am stuck. There's Japanese words going through to the programs in terminal yet on the GUI side only the date formats and the days of the week is shown in Japanese.

Update: I have tried making duplicate directories under /usr/share/locale/ja to have /usr/share/locale/ja_JP as well as /opt/maemo/usr/share/locale/ja to have /opt/maemo/usr/share/locale/ja_JP. Again no success.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

@Tuxsavvy

Thanks for looking into that.. While looking for this locale .deb from momoyan0306 from the link I mentioned above I managed to find a .deb version that works well on PR 1.3. If you are interested pls let me know and I shall PM you the installable. Since the original author doesnt seem to host this file anymore ( all links to this file on his site are broken ) and I managed to get this file from someone else who has saved it up, I am not posting it here

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

Is anyone here using keyholeTV ..

This may be of interest to those who are not in Japan but still would like to listen to Japanese AM/FM stations and also watch Japanese TV realtime. Target interest group would also include people learning Japanese.

It is based on P2P technology and they seem to have versions for Windows, Mac, WinMobile and also for linux/

It would be good to have this working on the n900..

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

I have used keyhole TV on my desktop computer, and indeed would like to see it working on N900. Currently I can watch dozens of live TV streams from China, Taiwan and Korea. Nothing from Japan...

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

I've attempted to use an N900 as my main phone in Japan but it wasn't really much of a success.

MMS - I got MMS working with fMMS on the Softbank network but I often had problems where I couldn't receive/open MMSs from Au or Docomo users. Didn't happen all of the time but a lost message isn't good. Other problems include not being able to check the server for messages which haven't yet been pushed to the phone yet (I don't know if that has changed in fMMS yet).

Emoji - I did manage to experiment with the emoticons to get some of the Softbank emoji to appear, though I never finished the solution.

Voicemail - Couldn't use DTMF tones to control my Softbank voicemail system.

Contacts/Phonebook - No katakana reading fields. Also there is no international number prefix setting, so if your numbers are in international format (+81), then you need to change them to local format before you can make a call from the Contacts application.

Maps - No real GoogleMaps for N900 means a very poor User Experience (compared to the S60 Google Maps app). Ovi Maps for Japan just basically tells you you are in Tokyo, no more details than that.

Infra-red - You may know about business card exchange using mobiles in Japan. IR port lacks SW for N900, so you can't easily exchange contact details.

Hate to say this but I personally would not recommend using the N900 in Japan.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

Infra-red is a little outdated don't you think? I think people would exchange business cards, v-cards and what not via bluetooth? Though iirc N900's infra-red was detailed somewhere that it does not follow the regulations of the IRDA hence the lack of infra-red apps except for instance qtirreco .

As for google maps, there's no official ones from google which is a given. However there's GeePS (available from Extras under PR1.3) which utilises google maps.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

all,

I'm in Japan atm, if you have an existing softbank sim card from a softbank phone, would you be able to use this on a foreign n900?

edit: I did try out the SIM, got 3G and data connection, but upon further reading softbank may charge you an arm and a leg for using their SIM on a foreign device. I don't think this place is appropriate for discussing softbank-specific case like this so I'll post this specific q in other forums. Thx

cheers,
z

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

(Cross-posting for other suffering MSCIM users)

I have just created a status menu switcher applet, which allows on-the-fly enabling/disabling of MSCIM (no rebooting).

This will save your battery life greatly, and also allows you to use the onscreen keyboard and symbol menu again!

It still has a few rough edges, but will probably be helpful to most people not requiring MSCIM to be active constantly.

Read this thread carefully, and then download the package if you wish to try it.

All usual warnings apply!! I will not be responsible if your device requires reflashing afterwards, etc.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

Hey guys,

Been on my n900 for close to 6 month now. I was on bmobile sim and it worked (kinda) great. I'm looking for a better sim-only deal, and stumbled upon Bmobile FAIR. Have anyone used this? Seems like a great deal to me but I'm not sure if this'll work as well for my n900.

Also, I'm in Yokohama area and my GPS can't get a fix (even when I have data connection). Any n900 user in Yokohama? :)

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

I'm not in Japan but I have some suggestions that maybe able to help you. You should check if Bmobile doesn't work on pure 850MHz band. N900 is a quadband device but it does not support 850MHz or any particular country specific radio bands such as China which uses some fancy 400+MHz band.

Japan as far as I know used to not provide SIM services. They used to have similar designs as US did with CDMA. However I have heard that they are phasing that out in a bid to slowly conform with the majority in using SIM (thus GSM) services. The only thing however is the radio bands that each operator is allowed to operate on and thus comply with the national regulatory authority.

The GPS signal issue I think is now a widespread known problem if you're using AGPS. Though there has been no concise proof of any probable findings but the bottom line is that nokia's SUPL server is playing up. Many have been advised to use google's SUPL server and has had yielded great success.

To change the GPS server (if you're using AGPS) go into: Settings -> Location (under Connectivity) -> Location server (under Network positioning on the very bottom) -> change to supl.google.com (instead of supl.nokia.com).

If you're not using AGPS mode but only the internal GPS, it will take a fair amount of time to get a proper lock on your current location. Variations under weather and potentially under various areas (such as under a carpark with a roof, shopping centres, etc) can influence the accuracy and thus delay the amount of time for the initial tracking.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

Hi Zsugi

I have used bmobile talking SIM U300 (talking and slow internet) on my N900 without any problem. At the moment I am using b-mobile 1GB定額 (internet only). There are different "Fair" Sims. It looks as if some have data only and some have also talking included. If you want to use a data only sim then the setup of this sim card is a bit a pain. You have to send some dbus commands to your N900 (from the Shell). I found a How-To on some blog. After this setup the data only sim works very good. I would expect the "Fair" dataplan to work as well, but I have not tested it. Which bmobile plan have you used on your N900?
With the bmobile 1GB the internet connection is pretty fast, but unfortunately skype is not very good. Sometimes it works well and sometimes not. And talking to stuttering people on the phone is not very pleasant.


I have been to Yokohama yesterday. I am living in Tokyo at the moment. I got some GPS fix, but it took some time. I think it was because of the shitty weather yesterday. So, no problems here.

Cheers,

keynya

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

hey guys!

@tuxsavvy - tried the supl.google.com :) the gps sort of work, it's definitely better than before.

@keynya - I am now using the 1gb data only fair sim. It's great - I can do skype call, skype video no problem. Quality drops every now and then but it's expected. I got the DBUS command when I first got in 6 months back, I did got it working with the old USIM300 plan.

am trying the diff map apps now to find a usable one here in jp. why did nokia map have no japan map is beyond me.

Re: N900 in Japan?
 

Can you tell me what settings did you use for Softbank APN?
I have tried everything I found on the internet, but it doesn't work.
I also tried different user-agents.

I have a gray/white sim card.