Communications breakdown

It has to be in your iPhone set-up - I've used in-country data SIM cards for years without fault - both iMessage and email should have been available immediately.

I don't use SMS so somone else will have to chime in on that.

I agree with periscope - I would double check your set up and see if you are missing something or need to change it.

I have twice used a Vodaphone sim with an iPhone. Last June most recently.
I have not had any problems.
The first rule is to NOT leave the Vodaphone store until you have confirmed that it works as you expected.

I found them very helpful.

Your ISP is not blocking any email.

Dennis

Is the samsung phone still locked to your home network sim? If so, it will not work with any other third party sim, e.g. Portuguese, global or another American sim. You should check that your phone is unlocked before you travel.

Not sure why your iphone cannot send email when it can receive email with the Portuguese sims. Sometimes, my yahoo mail acts up and there is a long delay in sending (or receiving) emails. Or perhaps your recipient's spam filter is blocking your emails from Portugal. Good luck.

Both the meo and vodaphone stores are inside a mall so the signal was only good outside. I thought I had email working but I was wrong. My isp routinely blocks suspicious emails & my carrier does the same for texts. It is advised to tell them you are traveling outside the US. My iPhone is unlocked and with either new sim can text inside Portugal just not to the US.

I am using the mail client, with the same port settings for that I always use.

who is your carrier and who is your isp?

Dennis

US Carrier is T-Mobile
ISP is Cox
Typ port settings are 995 & I believe 465, but can’t remember which is pop and which smtp

Which T-Mobile plan? Most of their plans cover Portugal free of charge. Now it won't be 5G but 2G, but that can work. Also, you can call them for free and add on the Global Plan. I did while in Lisbon since I decided I wanted faster speeds. They added it and I was good to go in about 30 minutes.

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/international-roaming-checklist#:~:text=text%2C%20and%20voice.-,Our%20customer%20service%20number,no%20matter%20where%20you%20are.

Our customer service number
We'll still be right here if you need us while you're traveling and we promise not to get too jealous of your international escapades! To give us a call:

From your mobile device, dial +1-505-998-3793. We won't charge you anything for this call, no matter where you are. Go ahead and store this number in your phone's contact list for easy and quick dialing while you're away.

From a landline (long-distance fees may apply), dial the International Direct Dialing (IDD) prefix for the country you're in, followed by +1-505-998-3793.

I went over this with them before I left. I am on an inexpensive simple starter which states that I have global data , but their agent said oh no that plan is old you must pay more per mo (and no going back when you return), so I went with a local sim.

My days are filled with vacation stuff. I have already burned enough time on this while in Lisbon. Maybe in the next week I am sure cox webmail would work if I knew my password, but never had reason to memorize it. The texting issue was a mystery to vodaphone, as was the Samsung not even recognizing the sim.

Ok, so the deal is that text is just like voice- entirely dependent on the carrier. If you haven’t paid for intl minutes, you won’t get intl texting. iMessage seems to have the same flaw - it just doesn’t work without some kind of intl plan. I thought WhatsApp would circumvent these restrictions, but I haven’t been able to make it work intl either - and the Samsung phone only works for maps now and ignores the sim. With enough sangria, none of this matters.

WhatsApp should work over wifi. Have you tried signing into a wifi network?
You should also be able to send/receive emails over wifi, but probably not SMS/text/iMessage.

I have been trying both data and Wi-Fi. After a couple of days I did get a reply to one of my WhatsApp chats, so that does seem to be a working solution for a few contacts.

tns1
I had similar problem with whatsapp and my sim card in Italy. Would work with Italian numbers but decided not to recognize my north american contacts.
I totally support the use of Sangria to deal with the situation. May I also suggest a glass of Port too!

I can’t solve your SIM card problem but you can download WhatsApp while on wifi in your hotel. My kids are currently in Budapest, I am in Canada and we can text or video chat back and forth. Works well!

WhatsApp work fine if all parties already have it. I am finding a WA! invite looks like spam. It’s no good for contacting businesses.

I had a dormant icloud email acct, and once activated it worked fine on my iphone. Also talking or chatting with an Apple tech from Portugal was simple since they are actually global, rather than wannabe global.

After returning to the US, I looked into the email problem.
My ISP said they had experienced an increase in hacked email accts so took steps to increase security including webmail access. Not surprising, using a VPN to spoof location also failed (for email access).

The mystery is that the Samsung phone with no text or voice continued to receive US email whenever it had WiFi. This was still my ISP, my acct, same port settings, but just a different email address than the one I normally use setup on a different phone. My guess is that some of the intl features of the Vodaphone sim card made it look more legit to my ISP than the Portugal only sim in the iphone, thus not subject to the blocking.