My impression has been exactly the opposite - aside from full-internet on smartphones (not to say it isn't a big deal), new features in the US lag by something like 5 to 10 years. QR code reading and easy contact transfer(like 赤外線) still aren't out-of-the-box features (hacked in by third party software like Bump), and most Americans don't know what a QR code is. We still can't pay for things at the grocery store or buy train tickets with a cell phone, whereas Japan has had FeliCa Mobile for 7 years now. Live TV on a cell phone is also non-existent in the US. In Japan, these are all so common that they're available on the free-with-plan phones.
Also, according to the Japanese Wikipedia article, the first camera phone was DDI(Wilcom)'s VP-210 in 1999, and they exploded in popularity with Sharp's J-SH04 on J-Phone(Softbank) in 2000.[1] The US, by contrast, got their first camera phone in 2002.