[quote=“beepbeep”]Hey!
I just arrived in Taiwan with my unlocked HTC Hero.
I recently had the system upgrade to 2.1 and it has been running badly since then – I kinda wish they just never released it cos the processor on the hero obviously can’t deal with it and I can’t change back without golcarding which at this point may well brick my phone, ARGHHHH…
Anyway, any recommendations on what contract I should get/ whether I should keep my hero or if its worth getting another phone on contract? could I get a better android than the hero free on a contract? is the iphone 4 releasing here? (blasphemous I know, but hey, it is purty, and I’m right handed 
)
muchos gracias.[/quote]
Welcome to Taiwan. I will try to share some experiences from on helping to on-board and acclimate folks from overseas who came here to work for me and also from just trying to help newcomers in general. I wished there were more of this info when I first got here.
The best way to calculate apples to apples on plan with your phone versus plan with a new phone is to do a total cost of ownership calculation for the life of the contract (2 years). This is pretty straightforward. Just do it for a SIM plan without a phone, then do it for a plan with a phone. I found that most with-phone contracts will work out better than the SIM-only unless you have a source of regular “free” phones already, eg: issued from work or you’re a developer and get them for free. Getting into a no-phone contract with an (already) old phone is probably a bad idea, as you’re going to going to be stuck with your (already) old phone for the life of contract, unless you decide to just buy a phone straight up later, in which case, you should have just gotten one with the plan.
If you want recommendations on which carrier to choose, first find out what most of your friends are using. Typically in-network is discounted or free up to a certain call length. Getting the right carrier might even change your friends’ behavior about texting versus calling you to some extent. Then, look at what carrier has the phone you want. Go from there. Once you choose the carrier, you can do the math to figure out which of the plans is best for you. The big three here are Taiwan Mobile, ChunHwa Telecom and Far EasTone. Their stores are labeled MyFone, Senao or ChunHwa Telecom, Far EasTone respectively.
You should also know that if you have just arrived, unless you have an ARC or are a Taiwanese (dual) citizen, it will be extremely hard or impossible to get a phone contract. You should also know that all the contracts here in Taiwan require a “deposit” equivalent to pre-paying the plan for at least a few months. I’ve found 3 months without a subsidized phone and around 14 months for typical subsidized smartphone plans.
If you already have an ARC or (dual) citizenship, just do the total cost of ownership calculation and you’re set. If not, you have some options:
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Get a pre-paid SIM for now until you get your ARC, then get a contract with unlimited data.
Try to avoid using pre-paid data, it’s usually 0.005NT/128byte = 40NT ($1.25US) / MB which is ridiculous. To put in perspective, an unlimited plan is 850NT ($26USD), which will buy you 21MB on the prepaid card.
If you decide to do this anyway for special situations, the APN on the Emome branded cards from ChungHwa Telecom (aka: Senao) use the APN “emome” u: blank, p: blank and not “internet” which the phone will use as default.
There is a city-wide pay WiFi that I haven’t personally tried, but seem to see everywhere when I inadvertently leave my phone WiFi on, so this may suffice for the meantime. -
Get a friend/relative/coworker to get a contract for you in their name, and give them the money to make the deposit. They may have to do this on a carrier on which they don’t already have a plan.
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Try to find a shop who will give you a contract without an ARC. Have not found any of the major places that will do this.
iPhone4 won’t be available here in Taiwan on subsidy for at least a few months, but it will be here at some point. The ones available here right now are grey market and significantly marked up (33K NT and up). If you are doing a run to Hong Kong and get lucky such that you are there when the stores have stock, you can get one there.