Originally Posted by
LC USC
One thing that wasn't entirely clear during the event is that, ONLY Japan models (as in sold in Japan) will have the FeliCa chip? in addition to the standard NFC/ApplePay, and they carry different model numbers. You can verify by going to the specs for iPhone 7 in apple.co.jp and apple.com.
This means travellers are out of luck, which is a bummer, as I travel to Japan enough that I want the functionality too.
Japan models have their own sku
http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
Previously, China had their own sku. Now Japan has the special outlier model with support for Band 11, 21. Well, at least Apple didn't exclude band 7 on the US/China/HK model like they did with the iPhone SE.
Mobile Suica + foreign card compatible Apple Pay would be the most compelling reason for me to upgrade from the 6 Plus. Hm. Maybe a FeliCa Apple Watch 2 could sync with a non-Japan iPhone 7 or even earlier 6/6s with Apple Pay? That is, if whatever mechanism to sync them is available in the non-Japanese App Store.
ETA: Looks like I'm not the only one wondering about the Apple Watch 2 and older phone support. The specs state it works with iPhone 5 onwards + Apple Watch 2
http://japanese.engadget.com/2016/09...hone-5-felica/
http://www.apple.com/jp/apple-pay/getting-started/
Nice spot partially shot in Ito-ya Ginza