IPhone 5 in Japan

I don’t have a phone of any kind, so I don’t even pretend to know anything about them, but I have been following the news on the introduction of the new iPhone.  I’ve seen the pictures of the long lines of people waiting to acquire the new gadget and can’t help thinking how much the telephone has changed in my lifetime.

Last week I read an article on the JapanTimes Online website about the cost of service in Japan for the new iPhone.  Both KDDI and SoftBank ”will launch a high-speed mobile data communications service using the lte network when the new iPhone is launched, both setting the flat-rate data charge for the lte service for the iPhone at ¥5,460 per month. The two companies will offer the 32-gigabyte model at ¥10,320 and the 64-gigabyte model at ¥20,640.”  I’m sure I don’t need anything that costs that much.

In another phone related article, JapanTimes Online reported that people living in Tokyo pay the highest smartphone bills among seven major cities in the world.  According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, the reason for this is the expensive data communications fees and yen’s strength.  The average monthly bill for someone in Tokyo who talks 61 minutes and sends and receives 438 email messages was 7357 yen. Dusseldorf was in second place with the average monthly bill at the equivalent of 7012 yen, and New York at 6493 yen.  London, Paris, and Stockholm were each between 3000 and 4000 yen, and Seoul at 2702 yen.  The exchange rate is a little over 78 yen to the US dollar right now.

The Queen’s progress

Elizabeth could have afforded the new iPhone, but I don’t think she would have wanted one.

I’ve been working on her cuffs.  Most of the stitches are done with white perle cotton #12, so you may not realize how much detail there is. There are ten steps to each cuff!