Cell Phone for UK
 

I got to London a coupla weeks ago, and tried out my $10 mobal.com phone with £1.99 Virgin SIM as soon as I got to Heathrow.

NO NETWORK COVERAGE

Zut, alors! I had followed the unlocking instructions to the letter, tested it in the States to every extent possible, and thought I had beaten the system.

No such luck. I took it to the Virgin store at Piccadilly Circus, and the very friendly clerk there informed me that two unlock codes are necessary for some Nokia 5110s, and the second one doesn't always work. What to do?

Well, for starters, he gave me £10, no questions asked, for the Virgin SIM I had acquired on eBay. I liked that so much, I decided to go with a new Virgin phone. How about this deal:

<b>http://www.virginmobile.com/mobile/cms/view-page?page=SIE-STD-A65-1</b>

It's a brand new Siemens A65 triband with battery, charger, and &pound;15 airtime, all for &pound;30. If you can beat that, I'll dance at your golden wedding.

Airtime: 15p per minute for first 5 minutes each day; 5p after that. 20p to US.

Downside: the charger is 220V only. All that means is that I'll have to unplug the stove if I want to have a charged battery upon arrival over there.

34&euro; on ebay.de, I bought 2 of them in spring, locked to vodafone. The charger isn't 220V only, it also works fine on 110V eben though it doesn't say. I tried it in Mexico working perfectly. The part # is a5bhtn0
50-60Hz/45mA 5V/420ma 220-240V

Now just let me give you the directions for the dance.
Unlocking instructions, I won't give. You need to open it and cut a very tiny wire.

Charger is no problem...you can easily get a very inexpensive Siemens charger, they are pretty universal, from many mobile phone accessory places. Most of them sold in these places are dual voltage coming with a basic US plug but you can get a UK adapter plug, no converter necessary, for a few quid.

No network coverage is usually not a sign of the phone being locked....I think the problem here was the phone is a 900 single band and virgin which uses T mobile towers uses 1800...I suspect you could have gotten an O2 sim (BTW Mobal uses O2) pretty cheaply and there are a whole slew of ways to make inexpensive calls back to the US for about the same as 20p but what's done is done.

Even better for the charger - just get one for the car. You can then use it on both sides of the pond.

Even better for the charger - just use the 110V one off my S46. Same plug, same everything.

Yes, I coulda shoulda woulda used the O2 SIM that came with the Nokia, but I didn't think to take it with me.

Robbespierre, the 220V charger you bought will work on 110V too!

You're right...mobal uses o2 and you do indeed get the free incoming with them in the UK....couple that with a callbackworld or enlinea account and you would have been all set.

Hindsight is so good!

Just tried the 220V charger on 110V. No <i>joie</i>.

What's the part number printed on the plug? Should be a5bhtn0? The chargers exported to the UK shouldn't differ at all from the german version. They have to work.

Many of the chargers that are sold with older UK phones are not dual voltage....it should say (sometimes it is hard to read) input 110 - 240. I use cellphoneshop.net for my accessories and almost every charger they have provided for the last several years are dual voltage but come with US plugs...it's a simple matter to buy both UK and European adapter (not converter) plugs.

Siemens basically only uses 1 adapter as noted and will work with almost all of their models.

Also as an alternative from callphoneshop.net you can buy a little gizmo, dual voltage, for about 5 bucks that plugs into the mains on the male side and has a female side that accepts the auto adapter...nice to have means I don't have to carry separate (not that they are heavy mind you) mains and car adapters for my mobile.

P/N A5BHTN00116343

230V~ 0.3A 50/60HZ
5V---0.4A

On the box: Single Range Charger UK

You have one from another batch of the same charger as I. It actually is single voltage. :-( They used to mark them single and they were actually dual voltage.

xyz123, the older Siemens (C25,S25 etc) phones use a slightly different plug. It can easily be confused with the new one. It looks the same just is &quot;a little&quot; thicker.