Phones in England

Bring a lap top or iPad and Skype OR use the search field on this website, type in cell phones. Loads of archived information.

Donna - in case you didn't see the recent article from Travel Writer Ellen Creager in the Free Press on US smart phones brought overseas: http://www.freep.com/article/20130328/COL21/130328007/Undead-iPhone-racks-up-1-106-in-charges-abroad

Donna,
We bought a cheap local phone at Carphone Warehouse. For 20 pounds we got a phone and 10 pounds of call credit. You might even be able to do something less expensive than that--we were jet-lagged at the time. Anyway they set us up with an obscure carrier that gave us calls home for 4 pence a minute, and something reasonable for local calls (we didn't make many). We also used Skype on my husband's ipod Touch to talk to our son online when we had a WiFi connection.

Why don't you have international coverage on your phones? You can get it with T-Mobile. Did you mean that your phones don't have the right radio frequencies to work in Europe? It doesn't sound like it because, if so, a SIM card bought over there wouldn't work and wouldn't be an option. Simple solution: Use your T-Mobile phones (assuming they have the radio frequencies needed for England). Communicate by text message. That'll cost $0.50 to send and nothing to receive (assuming you have a message plan from T-Mobile). You can make calls with your phones, just know that it'll cost a bunch per minute (about $1.50 or so, but you can check T-Mobile's site to find out for sure). Be sure and turn off data roaming to keep from being hit with surprise costs, which can be enormous. That's the simple solution. As an alternative, get a few local SIMs in the U.K. Local calls (and even calls back to the U.S.) will be cheaper, but you'll have a U.K. number so it'll cost more for those in the U.S. to reach you. But from your question, it sounds like local calling and communicating is what you're mainly interested in, so a local service makes the most sense. You can use your phones from the U.S., assuming they have European frequencies and assuming they are, or you get them, unlocked.

I've bought a cheap phone and I've bought a sim to stuff in my own phone. Pay as you go rates make either very attractive. Aren't you on the hook for sky-high roaming charges if you use T-Mobile there?

Donna, don't know if this will help- I have an O2 pay as you go phone, bought here in the UK. Calls on this network to the US are 4p a minute (I think that's about 6 cents). Texts are also inexpensive. As a previous poster mentions, you can buy the phone really cheaply. The only thing that costs a lot are UK calls to UK numbers, unless they are also on the O2 network. So if you mostly want to call home, that might be the way to go.
I got mine from O2 but Carphone Warehouse is everywhere and very competitive prices.

One of the good things about Carphone Warehouse is that they are independent and sell products from a range of carriers. Therefore, you can buy from whichever carrier is offering the best deal for your needs at the time you are here. The store assistants will advise you.

We were just in London and concerned about keeping in touch with the US. We unlocked our phones before we left and purchase a SIM card at Heathrow for about L10. We also brought a smart phone and IPad. We never had to use the cell phone. Just emailed using IPad and smart phone when we had free WiFi, which was quite easy to get. Our cell phone provider offered packages but we saved a lot doing it this way. Be sure and check with your cell phone provider if you decide to go this route as they will be able to give you instructions as to unlocking your specific phone.

If you have an unlocked smartphone, the best deal for a pay-as-you-go SIM right now is from Three. A £15 top-up gets you 300 UK minutes, 3000 UK texts, and unlimited data for 30 days. Use your minutes for local calls and your data plan for IP calls and messaging to the US. Bonus: Three also has free tethering, so you can share your data connection with your tablet without needing to get a second SIM. I was very happy with this deal for 2 weeks last month -- the guy at Carphone Warehouse made sure all my settings were correct, and I didn't have to call Three customer service even once.

Just in UK 3 weeks ago. We have iphones and figured out it would be cheapest buying sim cards when there. BIG PROBLEM! We purchased a sim card from one of those Indian run little grocery shops, the guy couldn't figure out what we needed and sold us 2 cards that didn't work. Next day we were traveling on a tour so couldn't find another place to buy cards, the towns were to small. We had to use the phone on expensive mode! Every time we finally bought a new card we made them put it in. They would also tell us you could call a number and add minutes, the didn't work either. Do over again-I would bite the bullet and use the international call plan with our carrier or buy a phone with minutes over there.
It was a total mess when there.

Worth remembering - iPhone 4 and 4S use a MicroSIM, and the 5 uses a NanoSIM - rinky-dink corner shops often don't stock those sizes. but get your PAYG SIMs from a high-street phone retailer or large supermarket (Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U, Tesco etc) and you'll be just fine. Of course, this presupposes you've made sure your iPhone is SIM-unlocked which networks, and Apple, are pretty reluctant to do if you are still in contract. TBH going the other direction, I just add a few international roaming minutes and an international data bundle to my contract and tell people to email me except in dire emergencies...

We just got back. We took our unlocked GSM Iphones to the first CarPhoneWarehouse we found. They offered us all types of plans and choices; I opted for a plan thru TMobile that covered both Ireland and England. They set the phone up, and we were off and running. I called home, and made all types of calls. Carphone Warehouse is awesome. I would not hesitate to even buy a small phone from them if your phone is not compatible or unlocked. Wi-Fi was all over, so Skype would have worked just fine for calls to home.