Will My Phone Work?
UniquePhones > Travel > Will My Phone WorkUnfortunately, deciding to travel with your cell phone isn't the simplest part of travel planning.
Depending on where you live, the type cell phone you use at home may not work when traveling to other countries for reasons that aren't all that simple to understand. To be brief, about 204 countries (and counting) use what is called GSM type service. The U.S., a few Asian countries, the Caribbean and parts of Central and South American use a type called CDMA. GSM and CDMA phones are very different in their frequencies so if you go to a GSM country and attempt to use your CDMA phone, it won't work. While some carriers such as T-Mobile and AT&T have moved to GSM, many cell phone users have never needed to be aware of what type service their cell phones use.
If all that isn't complicated enough, add to it a difference in frequency bands. Part of the world uses one range and the other part uses completely different ones. If all were perfect with cell phones, they would all accommodate these frequency bands but sadly they don't.
Giving up? Don't. We have a simple system for you to look up what type cell phone you are using. Just go to our will your phone work tool. Very quickly you can find out whether or not your phone can be used on your trip.
That's step one. Now you need to unlock your cell phone so another SIM card can be used in it. If it is locked, just click here to get it unlocked.
