go phones

I'm sorry that you are not hearing from anyone. I wish I had experience and could help, but I use my iPhone. My inclination would be to find a place in Edinburgh to buy it rather than at the airport. You B&B host might have a recommendation. Also, if you do not get more advice here, try the Edinburgh forum on TripAdvisor.

Pam

There is a Carphone Wearhouse on Princes Street near Waverley Station, or some of the supermarkets. They will be the places to start. Plus there will be stores for the main operators (T-Mobile, EE, O2 etc) in the city.

I agree with MC Carphone warehouse are pretty good and you can pick up a real cheap PAYG phone plus credit for about £20. tell then what you need it for, ie just using in Scotland or to phone home and they will find one suitable.
There are mobile phone shops about every 100 yards in Edinburgh and on Princes street there are 3 in a row and another on the corner of the next block.

Buying a phone outright is a better option.
carphone do PAYG phones for as low as £2.99 ,but you have to add mandatory credit,and that is used at 20p a min on call charges
Argos tend to be cheapest for a new unlocked (often called SIM free) phone,£17 in offers
Tesco online have unlocked basic phones at £15
That said carphone warehouse not far behind .
A month SIM is widely used here.
£10 package ,generally giving unlimited UK text,hundreds of mins UK call time and 1GB of data.
Its often possible to add credit on top of the package to cover calls back to US for around 5c a min

Thanks for the recommendations. We did by a phone at O2. It was well worth it.

Hey, thank you for getting back to us and letting us know what worked!

Pam