Hello everyone,
I am going to England in about a month (yay!) for about a week and I'm wondering what I should do about a phone while I'm over there. Currently I have a Samsung Galaxy phone with Cricket. As far as I know, there's no coverage over there and my phone is "locked." Do you have any suggestions for me? I know I could pay to have it unlocked, but I'm just wondering if there are any other creative solutions?
Thank you!
I have a cheap unlocked phone and when I get to London I go to Vodafone and get a card with international minutes on it. You can usually get one that you can add to if you get low. I don't get data only minutes. I have done this in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, and France. I just got back from London and had plenty of minutes left. I spent less than 20 pounds and the calls to the states were about 10 cents per minute. You can get a cheap phone at Walmart. I believe Rick covers this in his travel books.
Thanks - Bill
When you get to London got to any Carphone Warehouse. Tell them what you need/want and they will set you up with a cheap phone and plan that will fit your needs.
Or, you could buy an unlocked phone before you leave. If you have Amazon Prime, look at this BLU R1 HD phone. It's an Android Smartphone that's only $60. I use this phone, without the ads, as my main phone and I really like it. It's unlocked and has dual sim cards. You can get an 8 GB version for $10 less but I suggest going with the 16 GB version.
What did people do before cell phones? Leave it at home for a week and immerse yourself in sightseeing. And give the number of your lodging to the people that will need to contact you in case of an emergency.
sk,
If you have an older phone with Cricket, it may be a CDMA model so it won't work in Europe anyway, regardless of whether it's locked or not. Does your phone use a SIM card?
You best bet is to go to a Carphone Warehouse or other mobile phone shop as soon as you arrive in the U.K. You shouldn't have any trouble finding one as they're ubiquitous, and I'm sure your hotel staff can provide directions. You may also be able to buy one at one of the airport shops, but I'd suggest waiting until you get into a larger centre (I assume you're starting in London)? One benefit of Carphone Warehouse is that they handle phones from a number of different networks, so you'll have more choice. Tell them what type of plan you want (ie: mostly local calls, calls back to the U.S., data), and the staff should be able to recommend the best phone model and plan.
Thank you, everyone! My phone is fairly new, so it might be an okay format to take over there. As far as I know, the device itself should work over there as everything BUT a phone. We'll be in London, so it's definitely not a remote area. But as I was doing research for this, I saw that there was Google Voice that you can make calls on?
ATT and Verizon users can buy international packages that provide temporary coverage overseas. Perhaps Cricket does, as well.
These packages are expensive, with low caps on usage, including data. But, if you don't plan to live on the phone for that one week, those caps might not be a problem and the cost might compare well with the cost of buying a phone and service for one week's use.
Google Voice, it seems, is only available in the U.S. Drill down at that link.
You should be able to use the What's App app to make phone calls free of charge to those who also have What's App. It works off internet coverage and not phone lines. I use it all the time from Boston to talk to my relatives in England.
If you just want to have a phone to call home and maybe a taxi, Skype works over wi-fi, but you need to buy credits to make the calls. It's cheap enough that I still have about $8 left from a $10 top-up in 2013.
Although you don't state the exact model or age of your phone, if your Galaxy is less than 4-5 years old, it probably isn't locked when it comes to foreign (non-US) telecom SIMs and it probably compatible with GSM networks world-wide. You can google the model number/serial number and quickly find out whether or not your phone has a quad-band GSM transceiver (what you'll need for Europe). In that case, it's easy enough to walk into a mobile phone store (I used O2) and have a pay-as-you-go SIM installed.
I would take a small plastic SD Card chip case with you in order to keep your Cricket SIM safe. If your SIM is installed via an external SIM slot, you might also want to take a SIM removal tool or a paperclip. Googling your phone model will also turn up instructions for replacing the SIM...
I"d check to see what model your phone is- or if it has a duel sim slot. Whatsapp is probably the most popular app if you still need/want to make calls- do some research, I think you can use wifi to do it- although if you aren't in a wifi area you'd need some roaming data from your home carrier. If you are lucky and your phone is unlocked or has a duel sim slot, you can just buy another sim to slide into it.
If you meet the requirements, you can get your phone unlocked.
[]https://www.cricketwireless.com/legal-info/device-unlock-policy.html[1]
With a decent wifi, I've found Skype to work fine for voice calls. It does seem to be sensitive to the bandwidth of the connection.
