Earlier this month, a survey conducted by Mformation Technologies Inc. revealed that, according to 61 percent of those surveyed in the UK and U.S., setting up a new cell phone is just as frustrating as opening up a new bank account. Forty-five percent of those surveyed said this difficulty has prevented them from upgrading to new phones, as the number of features vastly increases with the complexity of the phone, and frustration invariably follows suit.

I chuckle at this, since, after being in Japan for the last few weeks, it is obvious how wide the gap is between those surveyed in the Mformation poll and the general Japanese population. As a cursory glance around the inside of a Tokyo train car would no doubt reveal, cell phones (we’ll call them keitai) are huge in Japan, as much a part of everyday life as sushi and used underwear vending machines. The numbers back up this impression, as recent polls suggest that 95 percent of Japanese people in their twenties own a cellphone.

The relative complexity of the typical keitai enables these staggering numbers. The average DoCoMo or Softbank phone contains, at least, a number of features that would make American carriers and manufacturers blush in non-alcohol-induced embarrassment: television playback, e-payment, location tracking, and — brace yourself — waterproof casing. Take a picture with the Softbank 822p (which, I might add, is impossibly thin) and you will undoubtedly be shocked and amazed at the quality of the resulting image. Not even Apple’s most recent baby, the iPhone, can compare with the kinds of stuff Softbank and DoCoMo have been churning out for years.

The mentioning of the iPhone here is important. There is a rift between the average consumer in Japan and the average consumer in the U.S. when it comes to how they perceive cell phones. The average Japanese person, either through their own fruition or via the power of advertising, values features over simplicity. The more features a phone has, the more appealing it is. Even if that user never gets a chance to actually use all of the features, that the features exist is reason enough for people to want them. Contrast that with the United States, where, as exemplified by the aforementioned poll, the number of features a phone contains is often daunting enough to prevent people from buying them. The iPhone, more of a smart phone than simply a cell phone, does a good job of simplifying things for those frightened by archaic menus. Where there was once text there are now touchable icons. Touch the phone icon to call, the television icon to access Youtube, the clock to ... access the clock. Using the iPhone is a magical experience because it makes so much sense. No eduction is necessary; it’s just touch and go. A user-friendly utopia.

The problem is that Apple is unique among cellphone manufacturers in its ability to offer a product that is both feature-packed and accessible. The rest of the industry has had a hard time mimicking Apple, and there is, to be sure, quite a bit of money in figuring out how to do what Apple does better than Apple does it.

But to show that complex cell phones aren’t nearly as frustrating as those surveyed in the Mformation poll seem to suggest, lets look at one of the more famous American cell phone users — our newest President, Barack Obama. A notorious BlackBerry user, President Obama was told as far back as last year that his gaining of the White House would undoubtedly be joined with the loss of his most loyal companion. The reasons for this stretched further than simple concerns over how Obama’s use of a BlackBerry would work alongside the Presidential Records Act. Cellphones, as shown most recently (and rather brilliantly I must say) by the 2008 film Eagle Eye, are capable of things most users are only vaguely aware of. They can be remotely activated, allowing folks like the NSA to wirelessly tap a phone even when the phone is off. Cell phones can also be used to track their owners (cue a shot of Shia Leboeuf uttering rapid succession of “no”’s).

It should be fairly obvious where the dangers to Obama are here. The last thing the President would want would be to have his or her cell phone hacked by enemies of the U.S., and the last thing the people protecting the president would want is for the president’s position to be freely available after said hacking. It would be a security nightmare.

But, much to Obama’s delight, the Secret Service won’t have to pry the BlackBerry out of the President’s hands after all: Obama was given the green light to be the first e-mailing president earlier this year. While the question of which exact model of smart phone he received has yet to be answered, it’s safe to assume it is something in the vein of the Sectera Edge, a $3,350 fortress of a phone equipped with all sorts of fancy-sounding encryption protocols and approved by the NSA. Of course, Mr. Obama will be limited to communicating with only a select group of pre-approved people using the device, and, according to spokesman Robert Gibbs, Obama’s e-mails will be designed in a way that would prevent forwarding. (As if that would stop anyone: Ever heard of copy-and-paste, NSA?)

But it is still a victory won for the President, as well as the folks at BlackBerry, who undoubtedly will soon be trying their very best to associate BlackBerrys with Presidential awesomeness. It shouldn’t be too hard, really: I’ll give it three weeks tops before Obama is spotted by some photographer glancing at his Blackberry and four weeks before David Axelrod vainly attempts to smash the thing against the Oval Office wall.