"Domestic" vs. "International" Phones...

Bands for data.

Don't know about Straight talk - but I've used a Galaxy 3 and a Nokia C6 (bought unlocked from Amazon) on TMobile. Voice, text, wifi all good. Data either GRPS or Edge.
(Didn't care - used wifi)

Gave phones to daughter - she used them in UK with no problem.

Honestly, US carriers are crazy. Its only there where I hear of "porting numbers" and such things. Outside, I just pop my SIM card out of the phone, transfer it to a new one, and I am now using a new phone with my old number. I can travel to UK or France, buy an unlocked phone there, transfer my SIM into it, and voila, new phone still old number.

^he's changing carriers, so his old number needs to be ported to a new SIM. Don't you guys have to do that over there? We can take our sims out of our phones and put it in a unlocked one and it will be fine as well. No difference there.

OP, the only trouble you will run into with an international phone on ST will be APN settings for MMS and the like. There's plenty of info on what settings to use all over the internet, though. It seems you already know which bands your new phone will need to have. When you choose your sim, they're going to ask you to choose between T-Mo and ATT's network, so you'll definitely have to choose AT&T for most intl phones.

Oh that kind of porting numbers. I was thinking of CDMA phones that don't use SIM. I haven't tried that porting numbers if its possible here. I just get a new number. LOL. certain scammers get your older numbers and send you scam messages as your number gets older here.

chanchan05 said:

Honestly, US carriers are crazy. Its only there where I hear of "porting numbers" and such things. Outside, I just pop my SIM card out of the phone, transfer it to a new one, and I am now using a new phone with my old number. I can travel to UK or France, buy an unlocked phone there, transfer my SIM into it, and voila, new phone still old number.

Click to expand...

You have to remember, the EU regulates mobile telecommunications via a consortium of States. The US does not regulate the corporations that control mobile telecommunications within its borders, although there may be some agreements in pace with Canadian telecom companies (not sure). But, As long as you roam within the EU economic zone, you can do what you mentioned. Fly to Russia or the U.S. and you will be out of luck.

So, if you want to look at it your way, I can fly from California to New York and not have to bother buying a new phone or change my sim AND not get charged roamng fees. Let's see you fly 2500 miles and say the same.

International phones are set to 900 and 2100 bands for 3G, this is universal for both Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. This includes, S. Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. At least, there is going to be one carrier that will support the band even if not all of them do.

Some international phones have 850 3G, which is compatible with AT&T. Countries that have this include Canada, Australia, and many parts of Latin America. Note some Latin American phones only have 850 and 1900 3G bands, particularly among the low to middle end.

Very very few international phones have 1700 3G, which is used for T-Mobile USA. For this network, the fastest you will go is 2.5G EDGE.

EDGE on international phones will work on both AT&T and T-Mobile.

Some, but not all, AT&T phones have 2100 3G support.

Most T-Mobile smartphones have 2100 3G support, which is needed to roam on T-Mobile's European mother carrier.

Many international phones are unlocked out of the box, so you can switch SIMs from carrier to carrier. These are not sold with any carrier contracts. Freedom has a price, at least only a short term price, since you probably save more in the long term.

For Android user, this is notable --- international unlocked out of the box phones with no carrier contract and affiliation have their updates pushed to them from the manufacturer. They don't need carrier approvals to push updates. Hence they also get updates faster than regular carrier bound phones would.

No carrier affiliated unlocked phones have manufacturer's bloatware, but not carrier bloatware. They also don't have boot lockers and such.