Cellular

I am studying abroad in Hong Kong for a semester next year and was wondering how I should work the phone issue. My adviser said I could get by w/out one, but she is from a time and age when we still dialed rotary style. I NEED A PHONE.

Therefore, since a lot of people here seem knowledgeable about these kind of things, what do you recommend? I am need of a new phone anyway. I have heard that "quad bands" work internationally and that I might just need to get a SIM card in HK. Or the other option, to get a disposable.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Tx.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You can't live without a phone for a semester? Please.

Whatever you try to do it'll probably cost you a fortune. I reccomend just getting a phone card and using land lines/pay phones whenever you need to talk to someone back in your home country.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

This is depending what you expect to do with your phone. Do you want to only talk with it, do you want to use SMS, MMS (multimedia message service), camera, mobile internet, custom ringtones, mp3 player. Nowadays, you can have all that.

If you ask me, I'll tell you that Motorola phones are usually quad band and aren't really expensive. Take example on the RAZR. It has bluetooth, it's quadband, a camera, SMS, MMS, mobile internet. If you can find an unlocked one on ebay I think you can get it for less than 150$. When you get to HK, just go to any operator that is a GSM network (not CDMA), and only buy the SIM card with either a monthly plan or prepaid plan.

So when you get out of HK, you can always do the same thing with your local GSM operator.

CDMA phones only work for the carriers that sell them. It is very hard to make let's say, a Verizon phone on another CDMA network without being in roaming mode. CDMA does not work as GSM works so it's harder to switch operators withtout some expert tweaking.

But any unlocked GSM network(900/1800 MHZ preferably) phone. That or any phone supporting 3G (cause the asian market is way more advanced than everywhere else on the planet. They're working on 4G for god's sake!)

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

If you're going to be in Hong Kong you might as well get a phone there; it'll probably be more convenient than getting one here and trying to get it to work there. It's likely they already have phones that are better than anything they got here, so I wouldn't worry about it. If you worry about your folks here in the states / your home country calling you, just to put things in perspective, I call my friends in Japan on their cell phones quite a bit and they don't seem to be inconvenienced by it either way.

Personally, if I were you, I'd get the phone & service in Hong Kong, and try to see if there was a way of making that phone useful in the USA. Just seems more practical that way.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?