Traveling abroad with your cell phone can be simple and fun or it can be a nightmare. The worst part of this nightmare is the ending that leaves you with a ridiculous bill consisting of numerous fees that will surprise you to say the least. In order to avoid these unnecessary charges there are a few things that you will want to know.
You need to know the difference between CDMA and GSM. You will want to determine which of these types of phones you are currently using. You also will want to understand "unlocking" and how it affects your ability to use your phone outside of the US. One more important part of traveling outside of the country is learning how to obtain and use prepaid SIM cards.
GSM cell phones use SIM cards. AT&T and T-Mobile are two of the major GSM carriers on the west coast. There are others but all you need to determine is whether your phone has a SIM card or not, and whether it is quad band. Different areas of the world use different "bands" i.e. frequencies so while you might be ok in some areas with a dual or tri band phone, quad band assures that you can travel to just about anywhere and have a phone that is compatible with the local network.
If your phone meets both of these criteria, you simply need to find someone who can unlock it for you. GSM phones come from the manufacturer "locked" into the service provider who sells them. Unlocking your phone allows you not only usage outside of the country, but you can also switch to another GSM carrier at home if you so choose. Finding an unlock service can be as simple as checking craigslist or asking a sales rep at one of your local GSM stores. While they do not perform this service for you, someone in the store should be able to direct you to the right place. Lastly, once you have reached your travel destination you will want to purchase a prepaid SIM card that allows you minutes on that particular network. These are available in frequently visited locations, airports, gift stores, etc. Ask your travel agent before you leave if you are able to.
Now let's take a look at the CDMA companies. These include Verizon, Sprint, and many smaller localized services such as Metro PCS and Cricket Mobile. Here is the bad news. If you choose to deal with one of these companies when you travel your options are both limited and expensive. The main problem being that the rest of the world does not use CDMA technology so your Verizon or Sprint phone simply will not work in most foreign markets. It's a bit like the metric system versus standard measurements. Verizon will happily rent you a "World" phone for about $250 that works in most countries. A friend of mine traveled to Europe recently and spent $2.49 per minute plus long distance fees. She ended up with a bill in the neighborhood of $500!
The good news is that you do have other options. For one, if you are in a position to upgrade your contract and get a new phone, there are a couple of CDMA phones available currently which allow you to use GSM also once your phone has been unlocked. These are both Blackberry devices, the Storm and the Tour respectively.
If on the other hand you are not in a position to renew your contract or do not care to, it is easy enough to find a used or refurbished GSM phone that you can purchase for a lot less than $250. I have seen used quad band phones for $30 and up. These are nothing fancy but they will work. Once you have obtained a quad band GSM phone you will need to unlock it. See paragraph four for details and about purchasing a prepaid GSM card.
In summary:
Obtain a quad band GSM phone.
Unlock this phone for international use.
Purchase a prepaid SIM card at your destination.
Pop in your new SIM and start calling.
Here is one last piece of advice. Don't leave your $800 3GS iphone in your hotel room. It will almost certainly vanish and there's not a whole lot that you can do about it.
Have a great trip!
unlock iphone
Chronic Dev Team has finally released the much awaited GreenPois0n RC5 which brings full untethered iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak for all iOS devices. Unlike Redsn0w 0.9.7, GreenPois0n RC5 doesn’t require you to have SHSH blobs of 4.2b3 saved on Cydia. You can jailbreak any iOS device out of the box on iOS 4.2.1 using this latest version of GreenPois0n.
The following instructions will help you jailbreak iOS 4.2.1 on iPhone 4, 3GS, iPod touch 2G/3G/4G, iPad and Apple TV 2G using GreenPois0n.
NOTE: If your iPhone 4 rely on an unlock, do not update to iOS 4.2.1 yet as doing so will upgrade your baseband, making it impossible for now to unlock.
Step 1: Download GreenPois0n from the link given below.
Step 2: Connect your iPhone via USB to your computer and click on “Jailbreak” as seen in the screenshot below.
Step 3: Now follow the following onscreen instructions to enter DFU mode:
- Press and hold the sleep button for 2 seconds
- Continue holding sleep; press and hold home for 10 seconds.
- Release sleep button; continue holding home for 15 seconds.
Step 4: GreenPois0n will now start “Jailbreaking” your iOS device untethered on 4.2.1.
Step 5: Your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch should now be successfully jailbroken on iOS 4.2.1. Now start “Loader” found on the homescreen and install Cydia.
This is it! You are done !
UPDATE 1: Our complete step by step video guide is up!
UPDATE 2: GreenPois0n RC5_2 is up! Brings various bug fixes, including: GreenPois0n Initialized error.
UPDATE 3: If you are already using a tethered iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak using Redsn0w 0.9.6, just run GreenPois0n over it to untether iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak.
UPDATE 4: Windows version of GreenPois0n is now available for download. More details here.
Download GreenPois0n [Mac OS X Mirror]
Download iOS 4.2.1 for iPhone 4, 3GS, iPod touch 4G / 3G / 2G and iPad
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Since the launch of the version 4 back in August, the new Digg has been getting minor over-hauls time and again. One of the main reasons of the frequent changes is to bring back the user experience to the Digg community. Even though, the team at Digg did many mistakes which resulted in losing user-base, I still credit them a lot for the amount of efforts they are putting in to bring the community back.
They have been adding features ranging from upcoming to bury button, everything has been added as per the user request. They have also been tweaking up the design since then. When I logged onto Digg today, I found an invitation to view the new design. Clicking on that, I realized, the new design is even simpler.
Two of the things I loved about Digg v4 when it launched were the simplicity of design and speed of the site, but that at the cost of cutting almost all the features. Digg v4, however, after 6 months, looks very promising. It has all the features that diggers need, a better design than v3, faster to browse, lesser errors and an over-all better user-experience. The new design is only rolled out yet to 15 percent Digg users and will be soon rolled out to everyone else.
Digg team on the official Digg blog said
This new design includes a new way to browse between the different sections of the site and an easier way to filter your content. We’ve simplified the design to make stories more prominent and easier to read. The newly organized profile page makes it a snap to see all your statistics. And last but not least, a new submission flow makes submitting stories easier. We couldn’t wait any longer to share these with our users and gather feedback before a public rollout, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Even though the design has been built on the user feedback, Digg still allows you to switch between the designs. Apart from the re-design, Digg has finally been able to import all the user-stats from v3, which took much longer than expected.
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