Taking iPhone and iPad to Vienna - advice?

I provided some comments on your post on the Poland section, and that advice also applies to Austria.

The least expensive way to post to Facebook is to use the WiFi at your hotel. Yes, the WiFi will work on both the 5S and the iPad 4, however you'll have to be prepared for "variations in service" as hotel Wi-Fi is not always perfect.

You can also call or text on Wi-Fi using Apps such as Viber, Skype or What's App. If you want access to calls / text / data when away from Wi-Fi, you'll either have to buy a local SIM card or use international roaming with Verizon. I assume your iPhone is unlocked?

You can use your iphone with your US SIM card, but it will be expensive. Unless you plan to make tons of phone calls, getting an Austrian SIM card makes really no sense. If you get a SIM card in Austria it will be with a different company, not Verizon, so that plan would not apply.

As for WIFI, you should have it in your hotel for free. In addition, just about every restaurant, cafe and attraction in Vienna offers free WIFI. Even the city offers it free. With WIFI, you can post to Facebook for free and and WIFI will work with your devices.

For your phone you do not need a Austrian SIM card. Your phone may not accept one - mine is through at t and since I'm still paying for it through my cell contract it's "locked" so can't accept a new SIM card. It's an annoying thing the cell operators do when you are under contract. Verizon probably does it too

Your phone should work as-is but it will be expensive. You can use it on wifi for the internet or skype calls for free, but Internet when not on wifi, regular calls and texts costs. You can buy an international plan through Verizon to make it cheaper, or just use wifi.

Wifi will work perfectly. Just turn data off on your phone and iPad if it's the type with data and use wifi for Facebook and things. Hotels and cafes almost always have wifi. Finding it should not be an issue.

If you have an iPhone (or other smartphone with international capability) and Verizon as the carrier, they have a program called TravelPass. The charge is $10 day and can use whatever data you have on your U.S. plan and thus use your phone as if you were back in the U.S. If you don't use your phone in cellular mode (i.e., use only wifi) on any particular day, then there is no charge. I have used this TravelPass on two prior trips (Italy and the U.K.) and had no problems. I plan to use it later this month in Hungary and Austria. It is pricy, but if you are out and about and do not have access to wifi, it is great to be able to access the internet on the go. Here is a sample of the text messages that you receive (1) upon turning your phone on in Europe; and (2) each day you use TravelPass: (1) "Friday, 1 Sept 2017 @ 7:10 a.m. Free VZW Msg: Welcome to United Kingdom. Dial +1 & 10-digit# to call US. For Int'l Support call +1-908-559-4899 or visit www.vzw.com/intltrvl. You have TravelPass. Use your talk, text and data plan allowances while in United Kingdom for an additional $10/day. For details visit vzw.com/intltrvl." (2) "Saturday, 2 Sept 2017 @ 1:00 a.m. Your daily TravelPass session will finish in 1 hour. After that, if you're still abroad and use talk, text or data, another daily session will be triggered."

All plans by foreign mobile providers are very expensive. Try to get along with WiFi only. WiFi is widely available in Vienna for free, not only in cafés, restaurants, hotels, etc., but on all major streets.

This is the official map of the City of Vienna: https://www.wien.gv.at/stadtplan/en/
Among the check boxes on the left side expand the section "communication & business" and check "WLAN hotspots". Then you can see where WiFi is available: red are hotspots of the city network, blue those of private enterprises.

All plans by foreign mobile providers are very expensive. Try to get along with WiFi only. WiFi is widely available in Vienna for free, not only in cafés, restaurants, hotels, etc., but on all major streets.

All plans are not very expensive. It varies by country, but we have had good luck with SIMs in both the U.K. and Italy. You can get 4GB for about 20 Euros in Italy, for example. And now the law is that roaming is free throughout the EU so if you get a SIM in one country, it will work elsewhere.

WIFI can be dangerous so if you use free, unprotected WIFI, be aware someone may be stealing your data. I personally NEVER use unprotected WIFI.

WIFI can be dangerous so if you use free, unprotected WIFI, be aware someone may be stealing your data. I personally NEVER use unprotected WIFI.

Most of what people do these days over WiFi is encrypted and perfectly safe over public Wifi. Most websites are now encrypted - even this forum uses SSL (https), so no one on public WiFi can "steal" these posts. Certainly Facebook, email websites and passwords are encrypted. Some websites may still not be encrypted, but these are "low risk" sites usually where you don't care if people can see it or not.

Expensive is in the eye of the beholder. Convenience should be factored in also. For short European trips of 7-10 days, which mine typically are, $10 per day on the Verizon TravelPass plan is worth it to me - no SIM cards to buy, no data limits to worry about (the data limit on my U.S. plan is 16 GB), I keep my same U.S. phone number, etc. For longer-term stays, I agree that a less expensive option would be preferred.

Expensive is in the eye of the beholder.

This is very true. Austria is known for its low mobile fares due to the competition of a lot of operators.

The mentioned plan of $10 per day is astronomically high, here you pay this per month.

This website is in German only, but easily understandable:
https://www.tarife.at/telefon-internet/mobiles-internet
On the left side you specify your requirements (data volume, speed, etc.), on the right side matching offers are listed.

I spent $30 USD total on a Dutch Vodafone SIM card, for 3GB of data for a month for use in Europe for 17 days in May. I bought it ahead of time, on eBay, and was able to set up before I left the US - it worked as soon as I landed in Venice. I'll be able to use the SIM on future trips, because it will stay active for a year. And because I already use my Google Voice number as my primary phone number, I could use my regular phone number in Europe with Google Hangouts to make/receive calls from the US for free.

Even if my mobile provider offered a plan that cost $10 a day (mine doesn't offer an international plan), $170 vs $30 would be a big cost difference. I could have activated T-Mobile for a month for about $100, but that still seemed too much. The SIM option was not hard and as I said, I'll be able to use it on future trips too.

Definitely agree that the above two options are much cheaper than Verizon's. However, the points I were emphasizing were a short-term (<10 days) trip and the convenience for an American traveler. Moreover, in the context of a European trip (airfare, lodging, meals), $70 for 7 days of Verizon TravelPass is a very small percentage of the total cost of a typical trip. And the Verizon cost assumes one uses the cellular data each day (if only wifi is used, there is no charge that day). I would consider astronomical costs to be what cars sell for in the Ringstrasse showrooms.

Ringstrasse showrooms?

cars sell for in the Ringstrasse showrooms.

Robert, in what decade you had been in Vienna lately? :-)

Along Ringstrasse there were traditionally a lot of old cafés, dating back to the time pre-WW I. In the sixties of the previous century the downfall started, many of them closed down and were converted to automobile showrooms. This was the time when individual traffic rose significantly, given the increase of wealth after WW II.

But this is over since a long time. Car dealers moved away to places which no space constraints, not to talk about the horrendous prices for renting a shop at Ringstrasse.

I was there this summer and never activated my phone's cell service (Verizon also). Left it on airplane mode the whole time. I found wifi was available all over the place--all the cafes have good wifi, so I was able to keep an eye on my email accounts and download maps, info, etc. as needed. It also felt really good to be mostly-disconnected!

Lived in the 9th Bezirk for one year in 1992-93 and several months in 1995; go back every few years. At that time, there was at least one car showroom on the opposite side of the Ringstrasse across from the kino where they show Der Dritte Mann each week. Used to walk by it frequently and gawk at the sticker prices. Just came to mind as an example of an 'astronomical' cost of something in Austria (compared to U.S. car prices at that time). We got off topic; glad to know your cell service is so inexpensive.