Traveling With Your Cellular, Using Foreign Sim Cards and Un-Rooting Your Android

I am wondering what you did and how it worked out for you? I am off to Iceland and I would like to take a smart phone with us. Emily's Samsung S4 or my Sony Xperia.

Buying the sim is easy part we are going to buy a prepaid SIM from Siminn. The hard part is I know to do this we have to unroot one of the phones. Have you done this and how did it affect the phone?

Rooting

Unroot

You should only need to get it unlocked from your carrier.

Guys at the mall should be able to do this for $40.

http://theunlockr.com/2013/01/28/how-to-use-your-phone-overseas/

Cheers Mat, have a great time. Riding bikes while you're there??

Why do you have to unroot your phone?

If you meant unlock, there are a lot of services that you can use to do that.

You should only need to get it unlocked from your carrier.

Guys at the mall should be able to do this for $40.

http://theunlockr.com/2013/01/28/how-to-use-your-phone-overseas/

Cheers Mat, have a great time. Riding bikes while you're there??

I am with Rogers so do I just ask them? Or whom are you referring to?
I thought the Apple fan boys were leading my down the wrong path, they said I would have to root my phone to be able to use foreign sims. I will just get my phone unlocked as all I want to do is slide a Siminn Cellular sim card.

We are going to be there for 14 sold days with our bikes in tow and are going to ride all four corners of that Island!!! B[HTML_REMOVED]B the whole way and a 5spd Zuk XL7 to bomb around in!! Your departure is fast approaching!!! I bet you guys are stoked!! We have some big trips coming up over the next few year so who knows we might see you over seas.

First make sure your phone will work on the foreign carrier. Check frequencies supported by them and your phone.

Unlocks can be done for not much money. I did mine through RFD. Look at these guys for an example:
http://www.cellunlocker.net/samsung-unlock.php

When we moved to the US we had the phones unlocked by the carrier ($35 per phone from Telus), and then just put a sim card from a local carrier in. But like Switch said, check the frequencies. Verizon (better service down here) is only CDMA, which isn't compatible with our GSM Telus phones. Had to go with AT[HTML_REMOVED]T, which is slightly cheaper but it drops data all the time for no reason.

Rooting can allow you to unlock your phone but your carrier can do this without rooting if they are agreeable. Just get someone that knows what they're doing to root and unlock if your carrier tells you to fuck off. Rooting can be tricky and if you don't read up on it and do it correctly you can render your phone useless.

You don't need to root to unlock an S4. The unlockers will give you the actual unlock code that will permanently unlock the code.

You can ask your carrier to unlock the phone. They will likely charge you, and you'll have to get the fee they charge from them.

If you go to www.redflagdeals.com, on the cell phone forum (it's a subforum of the computer forum), there are threads on unlocking. Some of the members will get the unlock coded for you for very reasonable price. I got mine for under $2.

You will likely need a SIM card for a carrier that you are not locked to. It is needed as part of the unlock process. Just borrow one from a friend.

This unlocking site gives you a detailed description of the unlock process for your phone:
http://unlock.canadagsm.ca/samsung/Samsung-I9505-GALAXY-S4-lte-network-unlock-code/

Google the carrier you want to use and check which frequencies they support.

When we moved to the US we had the phones unlocked by the carrier ($35 per phone from Telus), and then just put a sim card from a local carrier in. But like Switch said, check the frequencies. Verizon (better service down here) is only CDMA, which isn't compatible with our GSM Telus phones. Had to go with AT[HTML_REMOVED]T, which is slightly cheaper but it drops data all the time for no reason.

That's just the way the us cellular seems to work. Every trip we have done south of the border has lead to happiness of what coverage we get at home…

Btw on a samsung s3 on Telus it was $35 to have the phone unlocked then we just installed a roam mobility card to prompt the unlock code…

We are going to be there for 14 sold days with our bikes in tow and are going to ride all four corners of that Island!!! B[HTML_REMOVED]B the whole way and a 5spd Zuk XL7 to bomb around in!! Your departure is fast approaching!!! I bet you guys are stoked!! We have some big trips coming up over the next few year so who knows we might see you over seas.

That sounds wicked fun man. We just booked tickets to start our trip in Inuvik, NWT starting August 6th. I don't think we'll make it as far east as Ft. Mac, but definitely let us know when/where in the world you guys are going and perhaps we'll be there too!

Have a great time in Iceland, all of the pictures I have seen are incredible, I can only imagine that they are hardly done any justice in person.

FYI,

Iceland air lets people on the way to Europe stopover for a week or so each way.

Rogers wants $50 to unlock my phone!!!! Greedy fucks. Did the government not just pass a law against that?

That's what it costs from your provider.

Try the links I provided for better pricing. I unlocked my phone for $2.