WORLD PHONES

Before you can even think about using your cell phone abroad, you should make sure that the phone will work in the countries you're planning to visit. Some research will be required, so you should check with your provider or consult your phone's manual. There are several things you should find out about your phone to see if it will work globally:

Is your phone on the GSM standard? The most widely used cell phone standard in the world is GSM, or Global System for Mobile Communications. If your phone is a GSM phone, it will be compatible with carriers in almost every country, with the following major exceptions:

• Japan and South Korea have no GSM coverage at all. These countries use a newer standard called 3G, which is beginning to take hold around the world, but coverage outside of Japan or South Korea is few and far between. GSM phones and other non-3G phones will not work within their borders. (Likewise, a 3G phone will work in very few places in the world!)
• Some providers in the United States and Canada use the GSM standard, but there are many phones and providers that operate on the CDMA standard. You can use a GSM phone in the U.S. or Canada easily enough, but you cannot use a CDMA phone outside of those countries (with a few exceptions).

Can your phone operate on the correct frequencies? GSM phones operate on several different frequencies. Most of the world uses 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. The United States and Canada, and a few countries in Central and South America, use 1900 MHz and 850 MHz (sometimes mistakenly called 800 MHz). Many lower-end phones are "dual-band," in that they work only on the two frequency bands most commonly used in the country of their origin, and will not work at all in countries that use the other two bands. Some phones are tri-band, which will cover quite a bit more of the world by adding one of the two foreign bands; the best phones for global usage are quad-band phones which will work on all GSM frequencies. The most widely used frequency is 900 MHz. A 900MHz phone (all early GSM phones were 900MHz only) will work in most countries (apart from U.S. or Canada) that have the GSM system.

• The Travel Insider - more on cell phone frequencies, and a table of frequencies by country

Is your phone unlocked? GSM phones have a SIM card (Subscriber Identity Module) inside of them which provides the "identity" for the phone, including its phone number and cell phone carrier. If you plan on switching out the phone's SIM card (for instance, to have a local phone number at your destination) then you will have to make sure your phone is "unlocked." This is because many providers will "lock" the phone to their service if you purchased the phone from them, which prevents you from switching to another carrier by replacing the SIM card. This is arguably good business sense from the provider's perspective. It's not illegal to unlock a phone, but how to do this is outside the scope of this article for technical reasons. There are plenty of resources around the Internet that will help you unlock phones for free or for a small fee (about USD $5), or you may be able to find local phone-whizzes in your own hometown or at your destination that can do it for you on-the-spot for a price. Keep in mind, also, that some brands of phones are easier to unlock than others. For instance, Nokia phones can be unlocked with a simple code and you can do it yourself, while Motorola or Sony Ericcson phones require additional equipment and may require you to bring your phone to someone. Shop around: Unlocking services are generally cheaper and more easily available in Europe and Asia than in North America.

• The Travel Insider - GSM Cell Phone Unlocking FAQ
• An alternative is to just buy an unlocked phone in the first place. In some countries — for example China — phones are never locked. Various web sites and some shops in Western countries also sell unlocked phones, albeit usually at somewhat higher prices than the "deals" you can get by signing a contract for a service and taking a locked phone.

In summary, if you want a single phone that can be used in most places in the world with the greatest amount of flexibility, then what you want is an unlocked quad-band GSM phone.

The Motorola RAZR V3 [1] was one of the first widely available quad band phones and one of Motorola's most successful models ever. It is a very slim clamshell design with a camera. Moto still make the V3, but they now have a whole line of newer, more expensive, quad band phones. Other companies, notably Nokia, have noticed the success of the V3 and now have products designed to compete with it.