What is an unlocked phone?
 

This is not really a travel question, but it is travel related. And because people here, as a collective, seem to know pretty much all about everything, here it goes:

What is an unlocked phone and where do you get it from? I keep reading about them and about SIM cards…but have no idea what I’m reading about. It seems that an unlocked phone needs a SIM card – what’s that?

We are going to Ireland in the summer, and would be nice to have a cell phone available. So, where do I start? What would we need?

Sorry for all the stupid questions I asked lately. Thanks

If you do a search, you will find a great deal of information about cell phones on here.

Basically, cell phones acquired from most of the companies in the US are "locked" so they can only be used with a particular company.

When a phone is "unlocked" it can be used with any company that supports its technology. Unlocked phones are sold on ebay.

A sim card is a piece of hardware, a small plastic card, that fits in some cell phones to make them work with a particular company's service. If you have an unlocked cell phone, you can substitute the sim card from one company with another, including when you travel overseas.

If you buy a cell phone to use overseas, you basically want an "international" phone, one that has either quad band or tri band capabilities, preferably the quad band. That is because most places overseas operate on two frequencies that are different from the two frequencies used in the US.

You should be able to pick up a phone on ebay for about $50. A sim card in Ireland will cost you about $25. It comes with a certain amount of talk time built in. When you exhaust that, you can "top it off" adding more time.

Finally, if you already have cell service from someone like Cingular you may already have a tri band or quad band phone. If that is the case, you can contact them to get the information to allow you to get the phone unlocked before your trip. Then all you need to do is buy a sim card when you get to Ireland.

In addition to what Jack has just said, IF you have phone service with Cingular or T-Mobile and a quad band phone, you can request the unlock code so you can use it for international travel. It took a while for Cingular to get mine to me, but they did send it. I have used it with a Vodafone SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) in Italy.

Those two companies use the same technology used in Europe. The other carriers, Verizon, Sprint, etc don't use the same technology that is used in Europe.

You can use your Cingular Quad band phone in Europe.... you'll just pay a lot more than you will if you buy a SIM card for the country you are visiting.

I should add that you can use your Cingular phone with your current US SIM card ....you'll just pay more....

I have Cingular Quadband phone and as I understand it you have to sign up for the plan to use your Cingular phone in Europe. Or if you can get Cingular to unlock your Cingular phone then yes you can buy a SIM card in Europe which makes the cost per minute quite a bit inexpensive.

Here's a link to the most recent thread:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34953538

Bob

I'd suggest checking out slowtravel.com It has been a lifesaver for me, more detailed questions and answers... Good luck!

I've bought a mobal phone -- web site at mobal.com -- which has advantages and disadvantages. (I have no connection with that company except as a customer.)

For $49 you can get a phone that works in most countries but not the US, for $99 one that works in more countries including the US. You get a UK phone number with voice mail. When someone calls the UK number, your phone rings wherever you are in the world, or goes to the voice mail.

The disadvantages are, first that people in other countries who want to call you have to call the UK number. For instance, if you are in Athens and someone else in Athens want to call you, they have to call the UK number. You don't get a number in the country you are traveling in, unless you are traveling in the UK. And per minute charges are high.

The advantages are, first that there is no cost at all after you buy the phone unless you use it. There is no contract or minimum use required. You have to pay for incoming calls and voice mail, but when you are not traveling, you can turn off the phone and disable voice mail, and you will then have no charges at all. Also, a great advantage is that you can give people at home, as well as your airline and travel agent, that one UK number, and they will be able to contact you wherever you are in the world.

All in all, I think this phone is a good choice for people who don't intend to use a phone overseas except when really necessary, and who put a high value on people being able to contact them easily anywhere they travel -- you only have to give them one number.

...BTW, since it's a UK (actually O2 UK service) number, you won't pay to receive calls while in the UK.

Jack, xyz123 and everybody in-between,
THANK YOU! This is great info, exactly what I was looking for. We don’t have Cingular or T-Mobil, so we need to purchase a special phone for Ireland.

I will do more research and compare the unlocked phone + SIM card vs the mobal one. Both seem to have advantages and disadvantages, so need to figure out what’s more important to us.

And of course, I will check slowtrav, too.
Thanks again.

If you are just going to Ireland it may pay to wait until you arrive and then you can purchase a phone set up for that country. Usually you can buy the prepaid mobile plan which includes the actual phone and some free time. This phone would be good for making and receiving calls all over ireland. With the proper international phone card you can use it to call the US. If you travel to other European countries and intend to stay for any length of time you can buy a SIM to use in those countries. I have an English friend who brings her UK phone to Spain and inserts her Spanish SIM card when she gets there.

Do you have to pay Cingular for the unlock code? I see some websites for getting codes, including eBay, and they all charge for the codes.

Just to clarify a little further (well, hopefully): the cellphone technology that employs SIM (subscriber interface module) cards is called GSM. It's used in most countries of the world. It's also used in the USA and Canada, but the dominant cellphone technology there is not GSM but CDMA, which is probably what your current network provider uses.

As other posters have explained, even if your US network is GSM, it will use different frequencies from those used in most other countries (850 & 1900 Megahertz vs. 900 & 1800 MHz, for the record). A tri-band or quad-band phone will work almost everywhere except, I think, Japan, which has its own unique system.

GSM coverage in parts of North America can be patchy. The main GSM carriers, e.g. Cingular and Verizon in the US and Rogers in Canada, should publish coverage maps.

Ah Neil...

Verizon is not a GSM carrier...the GSM carriers in the USA are Cingular and T Mobile USA..otherwise you nailed it well.

A locked phone lives a monogamic relation with his/her SIM.
An unlocked phone lives a poligamic relation with whatever SIM he/she founds during his/her lifetime.

I kept intentionally the "his/her" because I don't know the sex of the device. My educated guess is that locked phones are male and the unlocked ones are female. You know, the "La donna è mobile" thing :-)

Please be aware that even if you do not contact Cingular in advance to "unlock" your phone for use overseas, you will still be charged if you check voicemail.

There seem to be some misconceptions here...

If you are using international roaming on either cingular or T Mobile USA, you need not unlock the phone....you will be using the same sim card, same phone number, same account as at home. The only thing different is you will pay exhorbitantly high rates...of course if you just use the phone for a call or two and to receive calls in an emergency, it isn't going to break you. All you need from the phone is that it have at least one (900 or 1800) of the European frequencies.

If you are buying local or international sim cards, that's when you need the phone to be unlocked. Locked or unlocked refer to the ability to use only the sim card of one company (locked) or any sim card (unlocked)...also if you are going the local sim route, you have to be more concerned with frequency and you really should make every effort to have a phone that has both European frequencies as some carriers are more dominant on one frequency than others. For example, much of the coverage on O2 UK is on 900 (it does have a moderate amount of 1800 coverage but 1800 coverage n o2 UK is nonesistant in some areas of the UK) so if you have the typical American tri band (850/1800/1900) necessary on Cingular as Cingular has a lot of 850 coverage in the USA not as important on T Mobile USA as T Mobile USA is predominantly 1900 coverage so if your home USA carrier is T Mobile USA, for the most part you'll be fine with a tri band with 900/1800/1900 (although T Mobile's coverage especially in rural areas sometimes necessitates you roam on another network which is predominantly 850; hence recent tri band phone sold by T Mobile USA are 850/1800/1900 and lack 900)....so if you're using your unlocked USA tri band phone from Cingular in the UK, you don't want an o2 sim...but T Mobile UK or Virgin Mobile which use T Mobile UK towers will be fine as T Mobile UK operates predominantly on 1800....

I know Robespierre, much too wordy...perhaps you can make the point in a more concise way.

vivi, no you do not have to pay Cingular to unlock the phone. They will unlock after 90 days of service with good standing. Tmobile is the same. I received my unlock codes from cingular in 4 days from the day I requested it.

We have Verizon, so it seems that our options are either
1) buy an unlocked phone on eBay and when we get to Ireland) and an Ireland SIM card. Based on prior posts, it seems that would be about $50 + $25 = $75.
2) buy (when we get in Ireland) a cell phone, as Raydotman suggested. Any idea how much this costs? Can we get it at Shannon airport?

We intend to use this for emergencies – call the B&B if we’re going to be late, call for assistance in case our car breaks on some side-road, things like that.
Thanks

-24 (123 - 99)...

Have you considered the mobal alternative...that is if you're only going to make a few emergency calls? Probably the easiest although not if you really intend to use the phone the best alternative?

Just to add to the confusion - European carriers sell cheap, no-frills Europe-only phones that aren't advertised. We bought a Siemens A57 with £5 on the SIM for £20 from Virgin Mobile. Their in-country rates aren't bad, for a prepaid service.

Whether it can be unlocked (so I could use a www.smobil.de SIM in Germany, for example) remains unknown.

If you buy on ebay, I suggest you look for a quadband and that you buy only from sellers with high ratings and lots of sales. An alternative is to go to the site
http://www.store.motorola.com/mot/en...irect/motorola,
and buy one of their unlocked gsm phones. The last time I looked they were selling two good quadbands, a v190 and a v235, for about $100 plus shipping.

If you use a GSM carrier in the U.S., you probably already have a quad-band phone. If you plan to sign up with Cingular or T-Mobile, they will supply you with a quad-band phone. If you only want cellular service in Europe, you don't need a quad-band phone.

A quad-band phone for $100 won't do anything for you that a $40 dual-band European model won't.

Why buy more electronics than you need?

xyz123,
You are right - I think I like the mobal alternative best. Just $49 plus the usage cost. Not sure how much the fee/minute is in Ireland, but considering we need the phone for emergencies only, that would do.

Plus, we can use the phone again next time we're in Europe :)

Thank you all, I think we're set now.

May I respectfully inquire as to why you think a $50 phone that does the same thing as a $30 phone is better?

Robespierre,
Which one is 30? I guess I'm still confused....

The Virgin Mobile phone I bought for £20 had £5 of airtime on the SIM. Net cost of phone: £15 = $30

Please let me exhaust this neverending subject with another question, do not kill me...

If I get the unlock code from Cingular and buy a SIM in Italy will I still have my regular cell phone number while I am using the purchased SIM? Or will I have an Italian number? Honest to God this all my my head explode, LOL.

The SIM contains the phone number. When you insert an Italian one, people will dial your brand-new Italy number to ring you.

There is something to be said though for buying the phone ahead of time and not spending your travel time phone shopping.

Do you count the cost of the time you spent hunting down a store in the purchsae price of the phone?

My mom tried to buy one in Rome but we were not near any malls, the one place we found charged more like 70E and we were supposed to come back there the next day to get it. So we passed on that.

Salive...

For the most part (and I know it's a generalization) in most of the large cities in Europe (Rome might be an exception) there are mobile phone stores on every corner or at the airport and I doubt extremely the amount of time taken up, in most cases, would be enough to kill your holiday.

There are advantages, of course, in getting the unlocked phone before hand or having your own Cingular phone unlocked....buying a sim pack is very straight forward although I do understand language can be a problem from time to time in some places (ah the value of some of the international cards which you can buy online all of which come with English language voice menus and English language instructions)....but then again as we say to each hir or her own (said in all due respect of course).

An 'unlocked' GSM phone can be used on more than one network; but you have to have a SIM for each network.

A SIM is a notched I/C Card (only 1-way to insert it in your GSM phone). It has your phone # and maintains your credit balance. Take the back (battery cover) off and look for the (about 3/8" x 3/4") removeable SIM. You can slide it out and replace it.

I have a T-Mobile quadband worldphone: T-Mobile provided unlock instructions for it... I haven't used it in Europe yet, but I have changed out a 'SIM' card. Alternative:

Buy an Eircom Phone Card for use in the Irish Republic Pay Phones. I have bought them at a NewsStand at Shannon; once I had to wait until I got to Galway and bought one at a convenience store. The Eircom Phone Card has an I/C on the card: you don't have to call an 800-number; it works just like money

so it doesn't matter which SIM card you purchase for an unlocked Cingulair quad band phone (to avoid the exhorbitant costs of using the original SIM card?) Just go to any cell phone store in Europe to get one?

Do I have this straight? It certainly sounds easy.

How do you "top off" to get more time? Go back to the store? Make a call?

Do European cell phone stores call it a SIM card or, imagining I get the person who doesn't speak English, are there other words for SIM card in French, Italian, etc?

Kwern..

Topping up can be done in many ways and is country and company specific. With some carriers, especially the international ones, you can top up on line.

In the UK, most of the providers when you buy a prepaid package (which includes the sim card and some time) give you a top up card which looks like a credit card. Being in the UK means, of course, language is no problem. So in this case, you go into any mobile phone store, most chemists, most gas stations with the card and bravely announce, "I should like to top up with £5" and the merchants runs the card through their credit card terminal and then asks for £5 (or you can give them your credit card) and voila done. In other circumstances, France comes to mind you go to a tabac and say, "Recharge pour Orange pour dix (or vingt or trente) euro s'il vous plait, they will give you a slip, you dial the number on the slip (it's 22r for Orange FR, you enter the 14 digit number and voila it's done). For some you can top up online although in many circumstances they only take home team credit cards..namely while you can top up a Virgin Mobile UK sim card by going to their web site, you wont' be able to use your US credit card as part of the process asks for a postal code and is keyed to only accept British postal codes....same thing as in France in Italy.....

In most tourist spots, of course, most merchants speak enough English to be able to make sales. I doubt you will have all that much difficulty in going into a mobile phone store to make your needs known.

As to which is best, well there is a great variety of practices and if saving money is your prime requisite, that might require a little bit of research on www.prepaidgsm.net.

For example, some on this board are very fond of Virgin Mobile in the UK and they're okay...except for the fact they charge 20p/minute to call the USA if that's one of your prime concerns. Far better might be Mobile World which only charges 5p/minute to call the USA but you would have to know about it. Vodafone UK charges over £1 to call the USA but then again you can get a calling card, dial the local London number pay their domestic prices and then complete the call with the calling card. This also is a way around very high French rates to call the USA and other foreign countries on their mobiles. Some companies, such as Orange UK block access to these numbers.

The one thing you will get with any gsm prepaid sim package in Europe is free reception of calls in the country of the sim card...once you leave that country, unless it is an international card such as United Mobile, o9, or an Isle of Man card, you pay to receive calls. Hopefully the eu regulation will go through and by syummer this price could be as low as 0,15€ but don't hold your breath that the European politicians will stick to this.

Long winded, as usual from me, but I hope I answered your question.

...damn the usual shortcoming of this forum not allowing you to edit your posts..

To top up an Orange FR sim, you dial 224 and enter the 16 digit number on the recharge slip.

Bookmarking....

xyz, here's the secret:

Always "Preview my reply" before posting, and you will be able to back up your browser later to where the "Edit" choice is offered. Hit that button and you can reconstruct the post to your heart's content, even days later (if you pull up the thread out of your browser's History).

<i>n.b.</i> Backing up to the &quot;Post a reply&quot; box doesn't work - you have to &quot;Edit&quot; to get to the right place.

Yes, there are cheaper ways of talking to the U.S., but the convenience of just walking into a store and walking out with something that doesn't cost a dollar a minute is priceless.

too lazy to do that...every modern bulletin board has an edit button...this one should too...nobody can argue that.

thanks xyz123 - that is much clearer now!

Hey xyz99 and xyz123, are you related?