Unlocking Your Phone for the World
Before we headed out for China, I thought about unlocking my iPhone. I knew it could be done because over two years ago when the iPhone first came out I saw someone from the US converting his iPhone to one that could accept Chinese mobile SIM card, without being tethered to AT&T. The international roaming fee for regular iPhone is extremely expensive. The night before our China trip I tried to jailbreak and unlock my iPhone without success. So I pulled out my old Samsung SGH-p207 cell phone in the drawer that I had before and obtained instructions online to unlock it. I couldn't do it in the US because I was lacking one key component, a Chinese mobile SIM card.
When I arrived in Beijing I took the phone to a local phone shop. The technician looked over my phone and said he probably could do it, but I had to leave my phone overnight and he would charge me 150 RMB for the service, besides, the SIM card for China Mobile cost over 100 RMB, so I was looking at minimum of 250RMB, with no guarantee that it would work.
I decided to do it myself, so I went to a nearby convenience store and bought a China Mobile SIM card for 100RMB. The cost included a unique phone number that could be activated once a call is placed and the phone number would be good until November 2010. Included was 200 minutes of talk time (50 RMB)
I went home and followed the unlocking instructions. I was able to unlock my Samsung phone (accepts China Mobile SIM without giving out an error message), but I could not get the phone to work. The phone could not find network signals. It took me a while to figure out that the frequency band setting for North America (GSM 850/1900) is different from China(900/1800). As soon I reset the GSM band, my old North American Samsung cell phone was instantly reborn as a China Mobile cell phone with CMCC logo.
My wife already has a Chinese cellphone provided by our daughter; now we each has our own phone it made life much easier. We can each shop in different parts of a huge department store without the fear of getting separated or lost. When we went to The Great Wall at Mutianyu 慕田峪長城 I could climb up the mountain while she took the cable car up and then we met up at the top by cell phone communication.
Thus, do not throw away your old cell phones. Unlock it and it will become your world phone. You should be able to find instructions online for just about any phone. When you have an unlocked phone in your possession all you need to do when you go to a new country is to get a local SIM card and switch your GSM setting, if necessary (GSM 850/1900 is only good for North, and most of South America. The other setting is for the rest of the world (Check world GSM map before you go) You can buy prepaid SIM card for many major Chinese cities on eBay for $20 USD.
If you don't know how to unlock your phone, or you don't want to risk damaging it, you can also buy an unlocked, used phone on eBay easily for less than $30 USD. Make sure it is a quad-band GSM phone (vs CDMA) and then you're all set for international travel.
JMTMD
