Phone/ maps questions

Who's your carrier? The answer goes a long way towards determining your options.

You might want to watch one of the RS Monday Night Travel Talks that focused on technology. There are a lot of options these days and I thought it was rather informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqHMHmA7I6I

Depending on specifically what you want to use the phone to do and whether you want to be able to use your home phone number, there are many options. It might help to outline your needs so people can give you better advice.

If you have TMobile you can use it overseas at no extra charge for data and text (that’s the reason why I ditched AT&&T years ago. If you have other carriers they may charge a lot more.

A cheap smart phone can be purchased for a reasonable amount of money. Once there you can buy a local SIM and a local plan for less than $30 for a whole month.

Most cars have car play to which you can connect your phone. For cars with GPS Navigator installed in the car, that depends on the model. It’s generally available in models that are intermediate and above. Or you can simply buy a paper map and do the way we all did 20+ years ago

Verizon phones will be unlocked automatically after 60 days.

If you are planning more trips overseas it could be cost effective to purchase an unlocked phone. Insure it is a world phone that has the LTE bands used in Europe. European countries use different LTE or 5G bands than the US.

Link below from Verizon.

https://www.verizon.com/support/device-unlocking-policy/

Maybe this is just me, but it would so bug me to buy one phone while I was paying for another I couldn’t use. You only need one phone that works in Italy, so could you find a way to fully pay for one of your phones, get it unlocked, and then get a sim or esim for it? The other phone, which will still be locked, could remain on airplane mode and still use wifi in your hotels or apartments, and I THINK could also use the unlocked phone as a hotspot. We used to have to do this at our cabin.

I guess I would figure that I had to pay for my new phone eventually, so do it before the trip to Europe. People on this forum will have many ideas for you to save money, such as staying a bit further out from the heavily touristed center, where to eat excellent but less expensive meals, having a few picnic meals from food from street markets, taking trains and buses from one destination to another before renting a car, etc. etc.. It would help to know where you plan to go and what you are interested in seeing and doing on this trip.

My husband says he asked Verizon to unlock his new but not yet fully paid for iPhone and they did.

If you have Verizon, why not get their Global Plan which costs $100 and is good for one month.
With that, you have about 250 minutes of phone calls--to the US or anywhere else. (You can also use FaceTime or What's App for free calling)

I get the Verizon Global plan every time I visit Italy/Spain and it's always worked out very well for me. You do not have to change Sim card.

We have Consumer Celluar and it doesn't work in Europe. We don't pay more for E service. However, we do use our phone when we have wi-fi, which every hotel or BnB has. Still, that wouldn't work in a rental car.

We have rented cars while in the UK or Europe and found that a GPS or NAV system is ALWAYS extra. In fact, it can be a significant cost.

We have AT&T, just set up our iPhones with 'AT&T International' for the time we're in Europe, which will be for 17 days starting next Tuesday. The deal is that to use your phone exactly like you would at home--no data, text or call restrictions--I'll get charged $12/day, the second phone (my wife's) is $6/day. AND...you can only be charged 10 days maximum within a billing cycle. Fortunately our entire trip falls within one billing cycle, so we'll be charged a total of $180 for our two phones for 17 days.

As critical as iPhones have become for international travel, I don't consider this a bad deal.

We have Consumer Celluar and it doesn't work in Europe.

It absolutely works in Europe - I've used CC international roaming in Italy, Poland and Hungary [plus airports AMS and MUC] with great results and reasonable cost over the past 18 months.

As for the OP's issue - is the $20+ per day the price for two phones, or just one? You should be able to get by with service on just one, and rely on wifi at your lodging, etc, for the second.

You might look into renting a mobile hotspot - this would give you data while out and about. Here is one example - I have no experience with it - you would want to research carefully:

https://www.witourist.com

You also need to decide whether you just need data, or whether you need to make calls as well. You would need WhatsApp or similar to make calls if you have data only.