Droid X in Germany?

Is the Droid X a "world" (GSM) phone? If it is, and you don't plan to use it much you could probably do OK with Verizon's international plan. If you want to make longer calls (or a lot of them, or if your phone is not GSM), a prepaid card will do. You might not find as many pay phones as you used to, but you can call from your hotels with them.

Techies please correct me, but I understand a Droid X Verizon phone may not be capable of sending/receiving telephone calls/texts while in Germany. One thought is to simply utilize Skype software over WiFi, which seems available at most accommodations. Load a small amount of money onto your Skype account and make calls to landlines/mobile phones at very cheap rates. Others can advise about buying mobiles that will work and the related rates.

The Droid X is CDMA only so it will not work in Europe. We recently upgraded my wife's Droid X to the Droid 3 which will work in Europe but due to the excessive cost of service I am going to put it in airplane mode and turn on wireless only. My son has rooted the old Droid X and installed an app that allows us to use our Google Voice account on it to make calls over wireless for free. We will see how it works.

I have a Droid X. It will not work in most areas (if any) of Europe. As stated above, it uses CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) protocol. I left it at home on our trip last year to Spain and France.

I took my Droid (Eris) to Spain last month and it worked great with Skype, HeyWire, and all of my apps in wifi areas. It is CDMA, so I couldn't use it for calls everywhere, but wifi is widely available, so it wasn't much of a problem.

How do you turn off everything but wireless? I would like to be able to check/send email if I'm at a free wireless cafe or something of the sort.
Thanks for all the help!

As of last summer Verizon Wireless offered a short-term(30 day IIRC) rental global smartphone for around $35. It uses your existing number. Turned out to be a lifesaver when our flight from CDG to Philadelphia got cancelled about an hour before boarding the plane to Paris. I had to do an internet search for customer service numbers. Only downside was that it was an unfamiliar model of phone and I was paranoid about data overages.

Keith, I hate to ask, but was it very expensive with the plan from Verizon? I know it's $35.00 monthly fee, but do they charge roaming, data, per call or text? Thanks
Stacie

Yes there were extra charges, but I don't remember all the details. I took the phone for limited use/emergencies. I had an app that would check the weather in our next port and I checked email for changes to our flights. A quick call back home every couple of days. I was very careful not to leave any apps running.

Stacie, to shut off everything but wifi, just put the phone in airplane mode, then turn on the wifi (in settings).