My wife and I both have iPhone 7's and Sprint is our carrier. Wondering if anybody knows what they offer in the way of service or special plans for a 2 week European jaunt. Also open to any other ideas for phone/text capability while in primarily Portugal.
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Here's Sprint's own page on the subject: https://www.sprint.com/en/shop/services/global-roaming.html
It seems they now have a plan similar to T-Mobile's. When in Portugal (and a bunch of other countries), you get free texts, free slow data (2G speeds), and calls are $0.20 per minute. You can buy faster data, but beware that many US phones do not have the necessary frequencies to get 4G speeds in Europe (they are not technologically compatible, no matter what you pay).
I have Sprint and used my phone in Portugal in May. As Harold says, they have the same international plan as T-Mobile - so free data roaming. The data is a little slow, but you may find it quite usable. I could have lived with it, but I had a Dutch Vodafone SIM from last year that I put 10 euros on to get fast data for the last eight days of the trip. I wouldn't have spent much more - would just have lived with the slower data otherwise. (Sometimes maps were a little slow to load, etc.)
I'll bet your iPhone 7 will have all of the fast LTE frequencies for use in Europe. Harold's right- some phones don't. My Android had only LTE band 7 which was sometimes available in Portugal but sometimes I got only 3G (which was still good enough actually). This had nothing to do with Sprint - I used both Sprint and Vodafone and both were occasionally LTE but often 3G.
My phone doesn't support WiFi calling (as far as I can tell), but if yours does, you can look into that - that would let you make/receive calls for free while on WiFI. Otherwise, you might install Google Hangouts on your phone, so you can make free phone calls to US numbers even landlines - handy to call your bank or airline if you need something and not fret about paying 20 cents/minute while on hold for a while or something.
