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Is there anything I need to do to make sure my phone works while travelling (and doesn't cost me a lot of money)?
T.J. asks:
I'm taking a vacation to Turkey, Greece, and Italy for a few weeks and this is the first time I'll be travelling without my work phone. Will my Galaxy S23 work without costing me an arm and a leg in international roaming fees from AT&T? Is there anything i should do before I leave to make sure?
Thanks
Hi T.J.! I'm jealous that you'll be catching the Mediterranean sun while I'm fighting the snow and slop here on the East Coast. You couldn't have picked a better place to spend a few weeks and I'll bet you have a great time.
For a quick answer to your question — you might be able to pop a local pre-paid SIM card in your phone and bypass those uber-expensive international roaming fees at the cost of not having your normal phone number for a few weeks. It all depends on if your phone is region-locked.
Unless you specifically bought an unlocked phone (something you should always do when you can) from your carrier (there are ways to check if your phone is unlocked) it's likely to have several of the radio bands locked in the firmware. They are still there and capable of working, they just need the lock removed.
Your carrier can do this in a store with technicians and the correct software, but getting them to do so can be difficult; they would rather you pay roaming fees or buy an international plan add-on.
That's actually not a bad idea in this case. If your phone is region-locked to North America spending an extra $10 or so per day is the easy way to use your phone almost anywhere without huge roaming fees. It's certainly less intimidating than unlocking the radio bands yourself through the phone's service menu.
If you're like me though, you'd rather mess with things than give AT&T extra money. The good news is that this has all been figured out and you can find complete instructions to do it yourself. Once this is done, you can pop a local SIM in and go. You might not have the fastest network connection, but everything will work.
What you'll be doing is entering a "secret code" into the phone's dialer to reach a technical menu that allows you to lock and unlock radio frequencies. It's not difficult, but it can be intimidating. That's why I mentioned how much easier adding a daily international add-on to your plan is. You can either pay $100 or so per week or go through a tedious and intricate set of instructions.
There is a third option — Google Fi. If your phone is carrier-unlocked (a different type of lock than region-lock; phone makers and carriers love locking things, apparently), you can buy a month of Google Fi service, which works with no extra fees in all three countries you mentioned. You don't have to sign any sort of contract, and when you're done, you just don't renew it.
You'll have a different number, just like you would if you used a local SIM card, but you won't be paying a bunch of surprise fees or a daily fee to use your phone without roaming charges.
Other than making sure you've enabled some sort of network connection, there isn't anything else to do. Your phone will automatically adjust things like the time and get its new location without doing anything and it should work exactly the same way it does back home.
Now, have fun in the sun for all of us stuck here in the winter weather!
