I was planning to get a quad band unlocked phone and get the sim card in France and Italy as recommended, and have seen some on amazon that are reasonable. However, I happened to stop in to Best Buy and phone guy there said: "no matter what type of phone you get here, it will NOT work well in Europe"; I find that hard to believe given what I have read, but any truth to this? Better to just get cheap phone there?
Thanks!
I bought a $30 quad band unlocked phone from Amazon and it worked great with a Lebara SIM card. I believe the phone I got was a "Jenny". It was voice only, no data.
A few years ago I bought an LG phone that worked great. Now I use my unlocked iphone 5 and it works as well as in the states. I think the "expert" is not. Target also sells unlocked quad bands for about 50 bucks.
You are going to receive many opinions. Please check out the thread below on EuroBuzz & pay attn to the poster Eileen. She has used this company. The first recommendation for this company (www.eurobuzz.com) was made on this website in 2010.
I do not carry stock in this company. I will be using their services on a 2015 trip.
My 2 cents worth.
"no matter what type of phone you get here, it will NOT work well in Europe";
This is absolute B.S.
I, as well as friends and family members, have taken many phones to Europe that were purchased in the US (dumbphones and smartphones), and they worked fine. The key, as you already know, is that the phone must have the correct frequencies (bands) and type of technology. North American phones can use GSM or CDMA or both, while European phones only use GSM. And for 2G service, North America uses the 850 and 1900 frequencies, while Europe uses 900 and 1800. Therefore, you need a quad band GSM phone, which will work in all countries that use the GSM system.
It is true that older and/or cheaper phones may not have all four bands. Many basic "dumbphones" had only the two bands for the continent where they were sold. So, if you have one of these bought in the US, it will not work in Europe. But a quad band phone certainly will. And if it's unlocked, you can put in any SIM card you want.
A triband phone will have two frequencies for one continent, and only one for the other; it may or may not work well, depending on which frequency the local carrier and local towers are using. Maybe that is what the salesman was referring to (to give him the benefit of the doubt). But these are now hard to find; newer phones are almost all quadband, except for cheaper dual band phones as I said above.
Of course, you do have to double-check any phone's specs before you buy it. But it needn't be a new or fancy phone; all Motorola RAZR's made for T-Mobile and AT&T were quadband, for example.
And, as a side note, the Eurobuzz phones mentioned above are dual-band for use in Europe ONLY. So you can buy them here (online, delivered by FedEx) but they won't work until you get there.
Nope. He doesn't know what he's talking about - maybe he's just repeating a second hand story from a friend? Your plan is a good one.
I really appreciate the time you all took to explain the CORRECT info to me- sheesh, what is wrong with people??? Thank you!!!
