Has anyone had experience with this phone in France?
Lewis

It's an inexpensive GMS 900 (single mode) cell phone for use in parts of Euorpe and SE Asia. It's also very limited in talk and stand-by time.

Orange FR and SFR, the two major mobile companies in France operate on both 900 and 1800 so you will probably be okay while you are in most parts of France but may run into some trouble in fringe areas of the country.

They are very old phones and if you check out ebay, you can probably get an unlocked dual band phone (900 and 1800) for around $50.

I prefer Nokia phones myself for 2 reasons...

1. I have a calculator that enables me to unlock them.

2. Their RF that is the strength of signal is probably better than other makes and many people have complained on bulletin boards about Motorola phones and their signal strength.

However I will say this. While signal strength is a significant issue in the United States, it rarely is in Europe as Europe is light years ahead of the US in mobile phone technology and there are towers everywhere and hardly any dead spots whatsoever in the big cities.

BTW while this may be hard to believe; mobile phones work perfectly well in the metro in Paris (while probably not on the RER in the city as the RER is in very deep tunnels).

Also the proliferation of mobile phones has become so great that the French government is thinking of adding jamming signals in theatres to make them inoperable in the theatres!

xyz123, can we go over the calculator part again, I sincerely don't understand what this means. Thanks...

For years, mobile phone companies have been locking their GSM phones. That is GSM phones operate with a chip called a SIM card. The SIM card basically controls the phone, what the phone number is, what mobile company the service is aligned to etc. Change the SIM card and all the information is changed.

Now in the US and other countries, some companies subsidize their phones and you pay less for them than if you would have bought them from the company. Of course, basically that phone company wants you to use its service. So the software of the phone is programmed to not allow the phone to boot up if the SIM card of another company is in it. When this occurs, the phone is said to be SIM PROVIDER (SP) locked...

Example, you buy a mobile phone from t mobile and they give you a great deal. T mobile is a GSM network and operates with SIM cards (in the US, basically T mobile is 100% GSM, Cingular and AT&T WS are becoming more and more GSM while Verizon and Sprint most assuredly are not which damages their usefulness as almost the entire rest of the world (Japan excepted) uses GSM for its mobile phones.

Anyway so you buy the phone from T mobile and decide you want to go to Europe and don't want to pay the very high roaming rates of T mobile and you think that with your tri band (900,1800,1900) phone you are all set. Simply land say in London, buy a GSM service pack from Virgin mobile for £10 and switch the SIM cards and you're in.

Wrong...the phone will tell you when you put in the Virgin mobile SIM card, sorry but this SIM card is not authorized.

Solution...enter a special code to unlock the phone. Now T mobile is fairly loose with providing unlock codes for phones it sells, many Cingular phones come unlocked but AT&T, when it was a living breathing entity, never did. That might change with the merger.

So the solution with Nokia phones was very simple. Somebody cracked the code Nokia used to generate the unlocking code. For the newer Nokia phones, this is called a DCT4 calculator; readilly available on the web. Enter the phone's series number (IMEI # which you get by entering I believe #*06#) and the code number (provided with the calculator) of the company to which the phone is SP locked and voila up comes the unlocking code, enter it in the phone and the phone is unlocked.

I have unlocked for friends many Nokia phones.

Draw back is that it works only for Nokia phones; other models need a cable and there is no free lunch for them in terms of an unlocking calculator which is why I prefer Nokia phones (although I haven't been able to find the Mobal company code to unlock their Nokia phones; somebody I am sure has it)....

Isn't 21st century technology neat!

xyz123 : you're all right, you know? Thanks for the explanation. We tried to make a Moto cel work and couldn't make it go w/o signing up for a new local cel# account. This sounds like the key to fit the lock. I have a Nokia something-or-another-model and we didn't attempt to make it work...Next time we know.

Cheers,

Aren't you glad there is somebody on this board who can provide 100% accurate information unlike some of the travel books and others who think they know.

And you get a good deal of humour with it...all for free.

xyz123 - thanks - we all appreciate you.
We can get the Motorola phone, which is touted as unlocked, for $50 plus $10 for shipping. The cheapest Nokia was $80 but I didn't spend a long time looking.
My question is about sim cards. Are they universal? That is do they fit in any phone? In other words, when we go to a place in Paris to buy a sim card, will there be any trouble for the old Motorola phone?
Thanks again for your help (and all the others also)
Lewis

SIMs will fit in any GSM phone.

Another feature I like are the recharge cards. In many countries they are available are kiosks and groceries.

For example, if you buy a prepaid SIM and the time runs out, you buy a card to recharge it. It's usually a scratch-off card. You punch in the code and off you go.

Wonderful, simple system.

Usually sold at tabacco shoppes (tabac in France) but they're all getting away from scratch cards; rather they run the transaction through a credit card type terminal (for all I know, it's the same termnial) and you get a slip much like a credit card invoice slip with the recharge #, call a pre designated number (224 for Orange France) enter the number, press send and voila the phone is topped up.