iphones in rome

Andre,

When travelling with your I-Phone the most important point will be to disable the data portion of the phone. If you leave this enabled, the phone will routinely check E-mail and access the data network, which could potentially result in a huge bill when you return home! The data section should be checked at routine intervals during your trip, to make sure this hasn't been inadvertentely turned on!

If you expect that any of your contacts might be phoning you, I would tell them to "hold" all calls until the day after you return. There's nothing more annoying than being awakened by a phone call at 03:00 because some moron "forgot" that you were travelling and didn't bother checking the time difference (trust me, I know).

Texting can is a fairly inexpensive way to keep in touch with family & friends back home. It has advantages over E-mail as it's always with you and the time zone difference is not usually a problem, as the messages can be retrieved when convenient.

Happy travels!

Speaking from experience, if you use your iPhone to make or receive calls or download data while in Italy, it will cost you dearly.

I traveled to Italy and signed up for the International Roaming and Data Roaming plans before I left. International Roaming is just a "discounted" per minute roaming rate, while Data Roaming is the purchase of prepaid data (Mb). International Roaming was $5.99/mo and Data Roaming was $59.99/mo for 50Mb of data. What they don't tell you is what the calls themselves will cost you on top of the roaming charges. All calls, local or long distance, incoming or outgoing will be charged at international long distance rates. Cha-Ching! When I returned from Italy, I had a $700 phone bill spread over two billing periods. AT&T recommends keeping these roaming plans active for two billing periods in order to pick up any stray charges. If not, any stray charges not picked up by the plans are billed at the regular calling and data rates. Cha-Ching!

The audio tours you will load on your phone before you leave and therefore will not need an internet connection to use them. You may want to check email, use Google Maps, etc. while there, so getting one of the Data Roaming plans might be a good idea. Otherwise, most hotels offer internet access, so even this might not be necessary. The no-cost alternative for using your iPhone for data while away is to find Wi Fi access and utilize that, if you think it is a safe connection. As I am not knowledgeable about unlocking phones just as you are, I would recommend just purchasing a prepaid phone when you get there to use for emergencies.

In any case, if you do take your iPhone, under email settings, turn push "off" and set email fetch to "manual" and under general settings => network => data roaming should be turned "off" when not in use. An alternative is to just turn Airplane Mode "on" which should block phone and data functions, but still allow a Wi Fi connection, which is usually free.

We took our iPhones with us to Italy this last May and had no problems. Make sure Data Roaming is turned off, fetch for email should also be turned off. If you really just want to use it as an ipod also put it into airplane mode unless you feel the need to make a call. If you think you may want to make a few phone calls, you may want to look at one of AT&T's international plans.

I made just a few phone calls and had the international plans, and was socked with a huge bill when I got back. See my post above. Beware.

Is there some secret to getting Wi-Fi to work on the iPhone? I have tried this in Canada and even if I was sitting in a major Wi-Fi hub (e.g., Starbucks), Wi-Fi would not work for me.

Head over to youetube.com. This second hand info, but somebody told me that there is a video somewhere on the site where somebody shows you you how to change the settings on the device to make it more compatible...worth a try.

Hi Andre, I took my iPhone to Italy last October, and left it in airplane mode the entire time. I had previously loaded RS audio tours through iTunes and they worked beautifully. There is no need to unlock your phone to listen to the tours. I found the audio tours for the Sistine Chapel and St Peters Basillica to be great. Have a great trip!

@ Steve - re jailbreaking. Two questions:

are all iPhones quad/world band ready, i.e., have the ability to use the two frequencies most common in Europe? Or are some only dual band for N. Amer frequencies? Not sure how to check, sorry if this is a dumb question.

what happens to a jailbroken phone when you get back? I think I heard somewhere that you can't upgrade operating systems on an unlocked iPhone - any experience with this? Is there a "break back into jail" app you know of?

I'm curious because of course we'd be much happier with our own iPhones, with all the contacts, apps and stuff, than with buying a second cheap phone with prepaid time over there and carrying two devices.

Thanks for any advice

After doing more reading on this, we are considering getting a netbook of some kind ($300-$350), and using that for checking email, internet access, uploading photos to Facebook, etc. It looks like most hotels have Wi-Fi available. The netbooks are only 10" and not so expensive that we'd be crushed if it broke or was stolen, like a laptop.

Then we'd keep our iPhones in Airplane mode so we can use the Rick Steves audio tours from iTunes, listen to the iPod feature, etc.

We will just tell our family/friends back home to reach us by email; it'll be cheaper than paying $$$$ for international calls on our iPhones.

If we need to call locally, I'm guessing it'll be cheaper to use the hotel phone or ask the concierge to call for us, than to use the iPhones.

Anyone else have experience with this?