5 ways to prepare your phone for travel abroad
Among the nightmare tales of travel told round the world, monster phone bills await to crush your digital memories into dust in a single “roaming data charge." Stolen phones can quickly become a catastrophe, as one man in Australia learned in 2014 after receiving a $500,000-bill, amazingly racked up in a single day. You could just ditch your phone altogether and add it to the list of things you’re on vacation from, but for the digitally savvy, it can still be your greatest ally on the road. Here's how to prepare your phone for a trip abroad:
Portable Charging
When outlets are in short supply, portable chargers like the Lepow Poki Ultra-Slim External Battery Pack or the beefier IOGEAR Mobile Power Station provide potentially life-saving energy, sometimes up to 4 to 5 complete charges of your phone or tablet. Prices are remarkably low, averaging between $30-$100.
Unlock your Phone
President Obama did a solid for travelers in 2014 by signing the "Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act," which allows phones to be unlocked for use on a local network at your destination. All it takes is the input of a new SIM card, purchased on location, which can save you buckets of money on roaming charges. Call your carrier to figure out whether your phone is locked and how to undo it. The removal process is somewhat arduous and depends on the schadenfreude of your carrier. T-Mobile seems the kindest, even putting out an app that lets you unlock your phone with a tap.
Ride the Carousel app
Any questions over your phone's storage capacity become moot if the phone disappears or is destroyed with all your photos and video on it. That's why professional travel photographers like Kirsten Alana swear by the Carousel App by Dropbox, which automatically backs up photos and videos in your virtually unlimited personal cloud-based storage.
Turn off mobile data
Just because you’re not using your phone at the moment, it doesn’t mean it's not gorging on incoming data, which without a roaming plan, becomes the biggest culprit of outrageous bills. The simplest and probably most effective trick, if you lack a good roaming plan, is to turn off data altogether via the “celluar” setting in iOS and “data usage” in Android. Calls and texts can still come though, but data only comes and goes when connected to WiFi.
Dial Wifi
Why send your voice on an expensive trip by wire when it can ride a WiFi signal for free? Apps like Google Voice, WhatsApp, Skype, FaceTime, and Facebook Messenger grant you the power of unlimited texting, live video and phone calls, all for the low low price of nothing (or next to it), much to the chagrin of mobile companies everywhere.