Re: [PLUG] OT: Unlocked Cell Phones

Thanks, Mike. You are right.

I guess in my travels I have sometimes found myself in places where 2G was all I could get, and so I tend to focus on that, and treat anything better than 2G as a bonus.

Although not mundane to the topic, I will share an anecdote about a place in the continental US with no cell coverage. Some years ago, I was on vacation in the North Rim of the Grand Canyon with no cell coverage. I had turned on my BlackBerry in the morning to check, and found no signal. Then I forgot to turn it off when taking a half day mule-back trip into the canyon. On my return, I found it had downloaded a couple days' worth of e-mails.

Regards

-- Bhaskar

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 6:56 AM, Mike DePaulo <mikedep333@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Bhaskar,

That is very good advice for feature phones. However, those 4 bands
are the 2G bands.

Over the last 5 years or so, I have found that nearly every smartphone
supports all 4 bands for 2G. Definitely all new smartphones worth $150
USD+ nowadays support all 4 bands for 2G.

It's the bands for 3G (HSPA) and 3.5G (HSPA+) where your $150 to $300
smartphone is likely to not support all the bands. There are 5
commonly used international bands instead of 4. Some of them overlap
with the 2G bands.

And in terms of 4G (LTE), there are even more bands.

If all you care about is making and receiving calls, sending and
receiving text messages, doing emails (either plaintext or html with
little to no images) and doing web browsing (with little images), then
2G service will suffice. You can send and receive texts with Google
Voice also; because GV texts are merely tiny amounts of data. I am
speaking from experience using a 3.5G android phone (Motorola Moto G
1st gen) with only 2G service abroad.

-Mike

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 8:21 PM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote:

> If you plan to travel, make sure that you get not just a GSM phone but a
> quad band GSM phone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands).
>
> Regards
> -- Bhaskar
>
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org> wrote:
>>
>> I'm planning to replace my smartphone, and I want to get one that is
>> unlocked.
>>
>> AS far as I know the only potential pitfalls to purchasing my own unlocked
>> phone are compatibility with the 2 competing network standards, and a
>> potential lack of warranty for some unlocked phones (at least, for the
>> android
>> ones sold by Amazon)
>>
>>
>> Are there other issues I should be aware of before spending $300 - $500
>> for a
>> new phone?
>> --
>> Casey Bralla
>>
>> Chief Nerd in Residence
>> The NerdWorld Organisation
>>
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