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

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

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