Annyeong Chingu. I’ve been in Seoul for the last few days visiting friends, checking out the sites and meeting with some of the largest companies in mobile. Needless to say, it’s been an interesting time and smartphones and mobile technology have played a large role so far.
Korea is somewhat rare in that most of its carriers use CDMA-based technologies for its networks, so getting connected for a visitor is not as easy as just bringing an unlocked phone and popping in a local SIM. Seoul is a huge metropolis, I don’t speak or read Korean and I needed/wanted constant connectivity, particularly in a country that has a reputation for being on the cutting edge of tech.
I had to get a smartphone. Luckily, it was quite easy to rent one for my stay and with reasonable prices. After a quick search in the Google machine, I reserved a Nexus S from S Roaming for about $7.50 a day. You pay a reasonable rate for any calls or texts you send out and what really sold me on this rental company is that you get unlimited data included with the rental. Picking it up was extremely easy, as there was a location at the airport and the rental process took about 8 minutes in total.
The one caveat is that you’re not allowed to install free-calling services like Skype or Tango or else you risk more fees. Luckily, I still have my Verizon iPhone 4 – mostly for music – and I can tether the Nexus S for free and use Skype or other barred apps on my iOS device.
The Nexus S only came out a little more than a year ago but man, it seems old. Part of this is that this is a rental unit that has a bulky case and screen protector that have been beaten unmercifully and it’s running Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread but the real reason is that the pace of innovation is so quick that a 15-month old phone definitely feels like a major step back from the iPhone 4S, Droid Razr Maxx, Lumia 900 or basically any high-end device that came out in the last year.
That always happens though and my job definitely skews my perspective. While it’s not as flashy and doesn’t have some of the features I’m accustomed to, the Nexus S is still perfectly good for getting e-mails, looking up maps, using Facebook Messenger to get around the SMS fees (shhhhhh), taking pictures, using the Google Translate app to try to communicate and yes, even making the occasional call. Without this “old” smartphone, my trip would have probably been miserable.
I’m visiting a friend who lives south of Seoul and three of my other buddies from around the world are also here but we’re not staying in the same place. We used AirBnB to book apartments within a few blocks of each other in the Shinsa-dong area and coordinating is key to making the most out of our time here. One pal didn’t rent a phone and is staying in a different location. Needless to say, communicating with him and trying to figure out where he is has been an incredible pain.
“Duh, Marin,” you’re probably smugly saying, “Of course having a phone makes things easier.” but I’m always thrown for a loop when traveling internationally and not having access to a smartphone. Having a smartphone with unlimited data is by far the most important thing I want when traveling abroad. I’d trade cushy accommodations, upgraded flights and many other things for the Internet in my pocket.
That doesn’t mean it has solved all my problems, as there’s still user error. I was trying to meet my friends and neither party knew where the other was. We hemmed and hawed on Facebook Messenger trying to describe where we were (“Uhh, there’s a big building with Korean on it.”). It also doesn’t help that Google Maps lists the streets solely in Korean, even if the Western name is printed on street signs. After acting like idiots for about 40 minutes, we turned on Google Latitude, had each others’ exact GPS location and were able to meet up shortly.
The people in Korea have also long seen the value in mobile but I was surprised to hear that the smartphone revolution took a little while to reach here. Like the smartphone industry as a whole, the iPhone was a catalyst for the Korean smartphone market and now it’s nearly impossible to not see buried in their screens. This is particularly true on the Metro – which is freaking amazing, by the way – and it also helps that pretty much every phone in the country has a built-in antenna for mobile television. There’s a good mix of iPhones, Samsung and LG phones I’ve found and the iPhone and Galaxy Note in particular, seem to be quite popular.
NFC payments for the Metro are working nearly everywhere but I didn’t see that much adoption except for with the younger crowd. Reception is also ubiquitous everywhere, even when you’re three stories underground trying to catch the subway. This is very impressive considering that Seoul is also full of many, many, many tall skyscrapers. To be fair to American carriers, Korea is much smaller than trying to cover the United States but I’m still impressed, nonetheless.
With the exception of the recently-released LG Vu, America has pretty much all of the top-tier phones that I saw in Seoul. They may get them a little earlier like with the Galaxy S II but you can rest assured that if Samsung or LG has an amazing device, it will be coming to the United States eventually.