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Re: [tlug] First Android Phone in Japan release date announced



Nikolay,
You can pre-order (yoyaku) and if you do, they tell you the price :)
It's 3 man (31,500, IIRC) with a 2 year contract and 6 man otherwise.
If you cancel you contract you have the pay the difference to 6 man.
I went and pre-ordered my phone today, and discovered you're a little off on the numbers.

It's 29,610 yen if you buy the device outright, *OR* you pay 1,190 yen/month for two years, *OR* you pay 2,380 yen/month for one year.

Note that if you add up the monthly payments for either the one or two year payment plans, it comes out to 28,560 yen, which is 1,050 yen less than buying it outright. That's because if you do the monthly plan, you pay an initial fee of - guess what? - 1,050 yen to "apply" for it. Bottom line is that the only difference between up front or by month is cash flow.

That's just for the device itself. Your service plan is completely separate. Still a little pricey, but not the 60,000 you had heard. (The device probably costs Docomo 60,000 to buy from HTC, but I'm sure they more than make up the difference by baking the costs into the service plans. That's how SoftBank sells iPhones at a loss and theoretically makes a profit.)

You can knock the price down to around 23,000 yen for the device if you take on some other service plans that cost less than a thousand a month. Things like reduced fees for frequently called numbers, or other ones I forget right now. Whether or not it's worth it to get the extra 6000 yen off would depend on whether or not those service plans would actually be useful to you.

Oh, and at DoCoMo in Ebisu and Sakuraya in Shibuya, it was a little touch and go as to whether or not I could reserve a phone. Seems they're having a lot of demand, and it might be tough to get one while they try to keep up over the first few weeks. I don't think we're talking line ups and sell outs like the iPhone, but the Google phone does seem to be popular.

Lastly, the most frustrating part of this process so far was getting my number portability document from SoftBank. They didn't overtly make it difficult, but there were all sorts of details to do with the two year service plan I was on, some bonus points I had earned (but couldn't really use), and other things. In the end it's going to cost me about 10,000 yen to get SoftBank's tentacles off me.

But now I've got my number portability form, and my phone reserved at the shop, so by this time tomorrow I will be Android-ified.



--
Dave M G
http://tlug.jp/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Dave_M_G


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