what phone for travelling?

[loltolhurst]

My friend is going travelling for a year in asia / south america. She currently has a company blackberry and she is going back to that job at the end so will get it then. Whats the best thing to do for a phone in the meantime? Pay as you go makes sense i presume but will that cost a fortune cw contract?

thanks

[Bill]

Buying PAYG sims as she moves from country to country will work out much cheaper. And use a skype account as most interweb cafes are set up for it. Contract phones are sodding expensive outside Europe.

[pokethepope]

Check what network systems (dont know the jargon im afraid) that each country uses, she'll probably be able to get a phone that will work in all them (Wikipedia has a useful table). In any case, a cheap Nokia (<£20) - she won't worry if she loses it or it gets nicked, and chargers will be very common.

Will probably save her a lot of hassle getting one from Carphone Warehouse before she goes rather than trying to find a shop at her first destination (key point is making sure its unlocked, most PAYG from CPW are, but take a couple of sims from different networks in and try the actual phone that you will be buying).

ETA. Re: Sim cards. What is the phone used for? Keeping in contact with fammily and friends in the UK and people she meets in the countries she's travelling to? In that case a single international roaming sim may be best, buying a new one in each country probably wont be worth it unless she is staying there for several weeks.

As an example, Im in Hong Kong at the moment, and the provider '3' have an international roaming sim card that gives good deals - im on the normal 'local' sim and it only costs 10 or 15p a min to phone a UK landline, and 1 or 2p within HK, so you can probably get it cheaper with a sim specifically for phoning internationally. See what you can find on the websites, the providers may have english versions of their websites.

Edited by pokethepope on Tuesday 22 September 16:33

[ccr32]

when I went, I got a freebie O2 PAYG sim card which (at the time) didn't require any type of monthly top-up to stay active. I'd keep that in my phone for receiving calls, but then either get a local sim card in whatever country I was in (depending on how long I was staying there) or/and use Skype to make calls.

I did take a relatively nice phone I had at the time with me, though it ended up getting water damaged, so I bought a cheapy Nokia in Thailand which served me well ever since.

From my experience, something that had wi-fi/Skype ability built in already would be a real nice-to-have, as in most places it would mean you would not have to pay to use an internet cafe. There was nothing around at the time for me, but sure there is now at the cheaper end of the market (thinking 3 etc.) without having to think about an iPhone or similar.

Whatever you do though, don't keep a contract running. Think I spent the sum total of £20 in 7 months on my UK PAYG sim - my friend however was paying that a month for the same privilege...

ETA: Not sure O2 do a no-monthly top-up sim anymore - I believe that Orange do however.

Edited by ccr32 on Tuesday 22 September 16:49

[Colonial]

I bought a 10 quid unlocked Nokia from carphone warehouse when I arrived in London and just got PAYG sims when I arrived in a new country if required.

Dead cheap and easy