Travelling

I'm visiting London for a few days soon. What is the best thing to do about a smart phone? I suppose the options are:

- rent a UK phone;
- use US phone but only when wifi is available;
- have US phone unlocked and insert UK sim card.

This will be my first time abroad in many years - since smart phones became so important. Any thoughts and advice are appreciated.

Thanks.

MmePerdu

If you'll travel from time to time it may be easiest and cost-effective to buy an inexpensive phone (unlocked, can also be bought at your destinations) and buy local sim cards on arrival. It's what I've done for many years and works very well.

PatrickLondon

You could go into a Carphone Warehouse, which handles all sorts of mobile phones, and has branches all over the place:

https://www.carphonewarehouse.com

dotheboyshall

- buy a mifi device

greg

Depending on your current carrier and the device type as well as your usage model, which you have not stated, you have additional options.

1. Use your current phone as is at no cost. If you have a plan that includes international roaming such as T-mobile or some Sprint, you can use the data and text parts at no additional charge. I have t-mobile. I just take my phone to Europe without any additional overhead. As soon as the plane touches down, my phone gets connected to a local roaming partner at no additional cost. I can use internet while the plane is taxing to my gate and send no charge unlimited texts to make arrangement with friends waiting for me.

2. Use your current phone with international roaming plan adder cost. If you have a plan that charges internal roaming, enroll your phone in their international plan. Know the different usage caps, however.

3. If you usage is minuscule just in case type of scenarios, just about any method would work.

Andrew

Both T-Mobile and Sprint charge 20 cents/minute for local calls or calls home to the US while roaming overseas and have unlimited 2G data. (If your phone has the "WiFi Calling" feature, T-Mobile lets you make free calls on WiFi while roaming; maybe Sprint does too. But your phone needs to have this feature, and not all phones do.)

If you use the Google Hangouts app, you can make free calls home to the US on WiFi or on mobile data, if your phone has the European frequencies needed to connected to the fastest data networks (otherwise, you might be stuck on a very slow "Edge" data network even if your phone works at 4G in the US).

I'd get the phone unlocked anyway if possible, just to have the option to buy a UK SIM once you get over there. Just know that when you get a UK SIM card, you'll get a UK phone number, too, so anyone trying to call that number from the US would have to make an international call. Setup Google Voice to go with Google Hangouts, and you'll get a free US phone number people can call to reach you while in the UK, for no cost to you or them, even if you have a UK SIM card.

tuscanlifeedit

I recently weighed all the options for a week in London. My carrier had a plan that fit my device, at, I think, $25.00 or less to cover a month, with generous usage caps. I didn't include phone calls because I've had a cheap English phone for years. It was more to include calls.

This was just too easy. I have Verizon.