caesar

Does anyone have experience purchasing an unlocked quad band iphone for use in Europe? We are planning extensive European travel over the next two years and we want to find a way to avoid extraordinarily high Canadian cell phone charges.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

kayd

Yes, I have been very happy with a used, no-frills quad band phone I purchased on Ebay two years ago for less than $30. In it I use the Ekit SIM, that is useful worldwide at reasonable cost -- 49Cents per minute for dialed calls, incoming free in most of the developed world.
Are you able to purchase from Ebay in the US for delivery to Canada? I know some Ebay vendors specify to which countries they will ship; you might have to do more searching than a US resident would.

travelgourmet

Where in Europe will you be traveling? There are some European countries where unlocked iPhones are sold brand new. I believe that France and Belgium were among the best places to buy them. If you can start your journey in one of those countries, then it would likely make the most sense to simply buy one upon arrival.

Once unlocked, the iPhone is a pretty good global phone, as it will even work in Korea and Japan, where most other phones won't work.

Robert2533

For the price of an unlocked iPhone you can afford to call home from any phone and talk for hours, but if you already have an iPhone, unlocked or not, Skype works fine and iCall isn't bad either.

If you have an unlocked quad band phone, any service in Europe, Vodafone, MoviStar, Orange, etc. offer incoming calls for free from anywhere in the world.

Steve92064

If you have an iPhone can't you just buy a sim card in Europe? Where is the best place to buy those sim cards?

Midnightsun

If you have an iPhone or another unlocked quad band phone, your cheapest option is to buy a SIM card in whatever country you visit (usually about ten euros with a few minutes of talk time). You can then recharge that SIM card as needed (in 5-10-20 Euro increments). This will get you local calls for about .10 per minute, much less than the .49 cents per minute on some of the worldwide SIMs. For long distance, get an international calling card that lets you dial a number in your country and make long distance calls through that number. Those run between 5 and 10 euros and let you make 100 minutes or so of calls. They run out a few weeks after you start using them, but they're fine for short trips. The SIM cards can be purchased in mobile phone shops (e.g. Orange in France, WIND in Italy) which are fairly common in medium size and large cities. The international calling cards (and the SIM charge ups) can be purchased at convenience stores, tabacs, etc.

This plan works fine if you're in one country, but it can get a bit complicated if you visit a lot of countries, because then the SIM purchased for one network won't work on another country's network. When we visited Sweden and Italy, we bought SIMs in both places (actually there was a promotion in Sweden which got us a free SIM when we purchased 100 kronor (about $14) worth of time, which we were going to do anyway). If you're visiting many countries on one trip, you might do better with something like the Ekit SIM, but you do pay about 5 times what you would otherwise pay for local calls. Of course if you choose to do international roaming (or whatever they call the service) from AT&T with a locked iPhone, you'll pay about $1 per minute for any call from anywhere (local or back to the US).

Steve92064

So to put a new sim chip in the iPhone it has to be unlocked?

ParisAmsterdam

Yes Steve, the iPhone must be unlocked.

ParisAmsterdam

Caesar,

Have a look at http://callineurope.com I've had one for a couple of years and used it in France and Greece. No need to change SIMs from country to country and they can set you up with a Canadian number that will forward to the phone in Europe.

Rob

caesar

Thanks for the feedback.
My remaining task is to find an unlocked iphone which is no easy feat.

xyz123

I was just helping somebody out on another blog and did a quick ebay search for gsm phones and found oodles of listings for unlocked quad band phones for as little as $20 shipping included (I think it's a Motorola...a few more bells and whistles a bit more...it's a piece of cake!