This was my first trip with a smart phone (Android). There were 4 (free) apps I used a lot:
- Adobe PDF reader for my downloaded Lonely Planet guidebook chapters. They were difficult to read on a small smart phone screen, but handy while out and about to double check something. Although the zoom function was weak – even with my good eyesight, the text wasn’t very big and the light blue markers/text for maps were darn near unreadable.
Even reading the pdfs on my laptop was less comfortable than a physical book, but it beat carrying around a big guidebook (and if you’ve ever carried, say, the entire India guidebook, you know what I mean).
Note: pdf reader was free; the Lonely Planet chapters were not. - ASTRO file manager. Nice app for navigating my SD card, e.g. to find the pdfs (and put a shortcut on my home screen).
- WorldExplorer map program. In particular, I was able to cache portions of the Taipei map from google maps easily, to varying degrees of zoom, for use while walking around town. With a strong zoom, I could even see the building outlines just like on google maps website.
- Taipei Metro map program. Not indispensable, but it was nice to peek at the subway map from my seat, instead of having to get up and look at the map next to the train door. It shows both Chinese and pinyin names for each station.
Note that the Taipei metro lines and stations do appear on google maps.
Also note that they were in the process of renaming Danshui to Tamsui (which is notable because it’s the northern end station of the red line) to be a more accurate reflection of the name.
So what about wi-ifi you ask? Taipei is quite wired. Both my hostel’s and one cafe around the corner had wi-fi with 3-6 Mbps down and at least 500 Kbps up. So skype worked well for calls back home.
If you have a local Taiwan mobile phone, you can register to use the free wi-fi around the city (I noticed it in a few metro stations).
If I had been there longer, I probably would have bought a prepaid SIM card for my unlocked quad-band GSM phone. As it was, I didn’t have any real need to call anywhere.