Need Advice. I am about to purchase a new cell phone and I foresee living in several countries within the next few years. Presently they include the USA, Mexico, Uruguay, Columbia, Portugal (including the Azores), Malta, and Italy.
I have been reading up on dual sim card phones and they appear to offer a lot of flexibility. Can anyone provide advice on what I should be looking for besides ensuring frequency compatibility?
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Rosa
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Hi, Iām using Google Fi for more than a year already, and very happy with it.
Now adding my wife to the plan.
With wife Iāll pay $35 per month + $10 for each GB of data.
It supports 200+ countries. I personally tested it in Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, Dominican Republic, Belgium, it works awesome.
But you can only activate it in US. I ordered the phone to my US friend, he received it, activated it, and brought it to me to Dominican Republic.
Thank you for the advice, it sounds like it should work in the countries I want to travel to in the near future. I will look into this immediately.
Greatly appreciated,
Rosa
Hi Rosa, I also travel a lot, and have a dual SIM phone.
I keep my main simcard, the number that hasnāt changed for years, in one of the slots. This is the number used by banks, etc, for 2-step authorisations, and the number that most people know I can always be contacted on.
In the second slot I use a simcard that I pick up in whichever country Iām in at the time. Depending on where that is, these sims can be picked up quite cheaply, and often have much more generous data allowances than your āhomeā sim.
In India, for example, you would get 1.5GB per day, plus calls and texts, for something like US$6 or 7 a month. Tether that to your laptop, and away you go!
My phone, if youāre interested, is a Nokia 5.1 Plus, bought online in NZ for about US$130. Very convenient and not expensive. There are lots of others available. Good luck, John C
This is exactly what I needed to know. I canāt wait to start traveling again. This is fantastic news.
I will be much better prepared this time around
Thank you!!!
I am also a Google Fi user. There is a limit to how long you can use their service while out of the US.
I understand Fi will cancel service if you move to another country and donāt return often enough
to the US.
Look into that.
Thank you for the heads up. I hadnāt heard this before.
You should also look into eSIMās. They are downloadable to most modern phones.
Very affordable and lots of choices. Airalo.com is one of many suppliers.
Found a nice write up on how eSIMās work and their value to travelers
and expats. Local and regional eSIMs for travellers - Airalo
I understand Flexiroam.com may have better pricing though.
thank you, I greatly appreciate the information.
As with most things in life, its a āyou get what you pay forā situation.
Ideally I would like a EU e-Sim card with pay and you go. E.g., I pay 10 Euros for the esim and get a phone number and then only pay when I make or receive calls/texts. I am sure such a thing exists but I have not found it yet. Most of the services I have seen want a monthly fee to maintain the account such as 12 euros a month. This is a lot when I only have less than 5 calls/texts a month.
EU has standardized roaming rates in the EEA so it should not matter from which country you get the sim card, unless you want a specific country (vanity) number.
I did find a service that gives a eSim for an EU phone number from the country of your choice and costs roughly $7 a month. So far the service seems to work fine but it is a bit convoluted in how their backend system works and routes calls. I suppose this is why the prices are what they are. But it does accomplish what I need in terms of having a phone number for a relatively low cost, and is more or less pay as you use.
After I have tried it a bit I can report back.
Look at the sim from onesimcard.com. The per-use charges might be higher but the carry cost is basically zero as long as you donāt mind having a number based in Estonia (if you want one in .pt then itās $2/mo plus you pay for relay costs essentially). The question is whether anyone is going to get upset about dialing to Estonia. but I had one for a long time and they only ask you use it once every two years. minutes cost more than other plans but you didnāt say anything about using it a lot, I assume the point is to simply have a fixed phone number.
that said, I thought you could get a vodafone sim and all you have to do is put $10 on it every 6 months or the like to keep it active, which you can theoretically do from remote. I havenāt cared enough to really dig into it at this point.
Yes. I will look at vodafone sim. I assume this is much easier and cheaper to pull off if one is actually at a store in the EU. I will try that next time I am there.
Basically, for others what you need to make this process as simple as possible are 3 things:
- carrier unlocked phone
- phone supporting dual sim cards (either physical or esim)
- phone supporting eSim card . See here eSIM Supported Phones list | Updated May 2023 - Holafly
There are a lot of article out there explaining all of this so I wonāt rehash it.
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I purposely purchased a OnePlus 8T phone because it was unlocked with 2 physical sim card slots. All of these suggestions are great and I will look into them and figure out my best option. Please continue to let me know your experiences with this.
thank you
I just bought a Global Data package (7GB, good for 360 days, works world wide)
Got it for future travel. Seemed like a good deal for $40. US Flexiroam.com
Never tried that outfit before, hope it works a promised.
I will definitely look into it. Thank you.