There are a couple important things you can do to prep your iPhone 5, 4S, 4, or older for overseas travel in order to avoid costly data roaming charges.
Most cell phone carriers offer some type of international data plans. However, they are all extremely overpriced and if you are not careful, you will run up a costly bill if you are not careful. There are many horror stories of people using just a few megabytes of data overseas and getting stuck with $2000 bills (you can read more about exorbitant bills in this article on ZDNet.com: International Data Roaming Rates: You are Being Robbed!). Needless to say, something needs to change before it will make sense to use data roaming abroad.
So, how can you make sure you avoid these charges. Here are a couple of tips:
1. Make sure that your Data Roaming setting is switched Off (Settings –> General –> Cellular –> Data Roaming). This will help to prevent unwanted use of data while traveling overseas.
2. To be even more certain that you don’t incur data fees while traveling out of the country, you can turn of Cellular Data as well (this toggle can be found in the same place as the Data Roaming toggle).
3. The safest way to be sure that you won’t get charged additional fees when traveling is to take out your sim card. To take out the sim card, take a paper clip and put it into the small hole located on the sim card tray on the side of your iPhone. Push in the paper clip to pop out the sim card tray. The iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 both have a micro sim and the iPhone 5 has a nano sim. These are easy to loose since they are very small, so I recommend getting an SD card holder to slip the sim card into. Amazon has an excellent memory card holder for $6.99 that holds up to 20 cards. Click here to see this card holder on Amazon: Micro-Tech® Memory Card Carrying Case – Black + 3 FREE Clear cases. When I travel, I always like to carry my sim card with me in case of some type of emergency. This allows me to make a call in an emergency situation on an international trip.
With your sim card out, you will be guaranteed that your cell phone carrier cannot charge you any random fees while you travel overseas. You can still use Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and even GPS. This works great if you have an app that includes offline maps like mTrip Travel Guides – click here to see the Shanghai, China version of this app: Shanghai Travel Guide (with Offline Maps). I used this app on a trip I took to China and it worked amazingly. I could find my way around this huge city knowing that I would always be able to find my way back – even without data on my iPhone 4S. I was also able to capture incredible pictures with my iPhone on my trip since I always had it with me.
