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Hi all,

I am hopeless when it comes to technology and am hoping for some answers here.

I am coming to live in L.A. for a couple of years in a bit over a months time. I would like to have a phone that works within America. Originally my plan was to buy a phone here on Australia to take overseas with me, but a friend advised me that America is one of the only countries in the world with weird network rules, and it is highly likely an Australian phone will not accept an American sim card to connect to american networks. A quick search on the internet produced confusing results and I am not sure what the best course of action is.

I am wanting to buy a samsung galaxy s7. Does anyone know, if I bought one in Australia, would I be able to use it in America? If yes, how would I go about doing that?
Or, I could buy an "American" Samsung from the american ebay website and have it shipped here to me before I leave, which i assume would have no problems getting set up in America, but would cost me more than buying one here.

Anyone had any experience with this?

You should be able to bring your phone and get a Sim card from one of the no contract carriers like straight talk wireless (Wal Mart).

If you're going to be staying a while,  might make more sense to wait until you get here & find a good plan with a free phone!

Eric

There are typically two types of phones: CDMA and GSM.  The latter have sim cards, the former do not.  The latter are used in most places whereas the former are primarily Verizon. ---Very generally.

You'd need one that is either "unlocked" or locked, but allowed to be used in the US.  They typically are "locked" to a region such that you can use a phone in AUS, Europe, Asia, North America, or South America. Again, generally.

I recently picked up an unlocked Moto X "Pure Edition" and I can definitely recommend it if you are an Android user.  Its about two years old now, but can be had for a very reasonbale price either used or new. It comes with a "turbo charger" which gets the phone to 90% in about 60 minutes. It is not carrier locked (thus the "Pure Edition") and receives updates straight from Motorola and has a few years left on its update cycle. It does not have the ability to do inductive charging, unfortunately, so if that's a dealbreaker you would have to use something else.  It does have an SD card slot though, up to 128GB, which is really convenient if you have a decent sized library you want to carry with you.

I have AT&T which has gotten a lot better in the last few years. They don't do contracts anymore, per se.  Month to month. I get unlimited everything (but no tethering) for $45USD a month.  That includes calls to Canada and Mexico.  Depending on whom you wish to call, they may have an AUS plan or you could - since you'd have unlimited internet - get a Google number for calls over there if you still need them. 

I use Ring Central for my Real Estate biz as a land line. I have a unit for both my office and my house. It broadcasts the same CID for both units. If you pick up the unit and plug it is the internet anywhere and it works the same. You can have it forward to a cell phone or simultaneously ring all numbers.
So you could get one with and American number and plug it in at you home.
$50/mo unlimited calls
https://www.ringcentral.com/

Pay as you go with Straight talk. Don't bring your own phone. Their phones are pretty good and very inexpensive.

Don't buy a phone in Australia.  They are much cheaper in the US.  Buy one once to get to LA or get a 2 year plan that includes phone for free.

Now that I've had my coffee:

With the pay as you go plans from net10, straight talk, and now even verizon, you usually pay $45-50 per month for unlimited talk, text, and data. The data is usually throttled after 3 Gb, but wil continue working. I've actually never been able to see it get throttled even though I received the data usage warning text (Straight Talk).

You can get the newest and best phones from them, but they cost what you'd expect. Instead of getting the Galaxy Grand Supreme XL for $600, you can get the Galaxy Grand Sky for $90 and have a phone that is nearly as good. I tried to use an old phone with their SIM but was unable to get multi party texts and media texts to work.

The international version of the S7, available in single or dual sim, models SM-G930F or SM-G930FD will work just fine for any US or Australian carrier that uses a sim card for GSM, namely the AT&T and T-Mobile networks in the US, provided that the one you buy is not locked to an Aussie carrier.

You'll need to avoid US carriers Sprint and Verizon and all the smaller names that use their network as they use the CDMA technology instead of GSM, and require phones that are specific to that carrier.

The problem in the US is that each carrier would prefer to sell their own version of the S7 that will in practice only work best on their network. There is also a separate US unlocked version SM-G930U that will work the same as the international version, though you will get better reception on a specific carrier's network with their specific version of the phone, and certain carrier features such as wifi calling, or Voice over LTE will only work if you have the specific carrier version of the phone.

It shouldn't be that noticeable of a difference though.

Thanks for the responses they were super helpful!

I ended up buying a second hand unlocked Verizon galaxy s7 over the internet which cost me 400 Australian which is about 300 USD or so. I turned it on in Australia and got all my apps installed (bank app etc...).

Since arriving in L.A. I took it into AT&T and went on a 35 dollar a month prepaid thing. So it seems in America it's really difficult to find a plan where you get less talk and text time but more data. In Australia I would pay $50 Australian a month and get unlimited talk and text with 14GB of data. Here it seems to be if you want more than 1 gig of data you need to pay about 45USD a month.... that seems expensive to me.

Quote from: bigbassbone1 on Aug 25, 2017, 06:17PMThanks for the responses they were super helpful!

I ended up buying a second hand unlocked Verizon galaxy s7 over the internet which cost me 400 Australian which is about 300 USD or so. I turned it on in Australia and got all my apps installed (bank app etc...).

Since arriving in L.A. I took it into AT&T and went on a 35 dollar a month prepaid thing. So it seems in America it's really difficult to find a plan where you get less talk and text time but more data. In Australia I would pay $50 Australian a month and get unlimited talk and text with 14GB of data. Here it seems to be if you want more than 1 gig of data you need to pay about 45USD a month.... that seems expensive to me.

You can if you have a tablet device... but its basically only texting and data then depending on the carrier.  For $45 you can get unlimited everything with AT&T but I'm not familiar with other competitors at the moment as I live in a smaller area where its basically the only viable network.

Straight talk is unlimited talk text and data for $45, for a smart phone. Unlimited amounts, but I think after 5 gigs, they limit the speed of your data. But I've made it many many times past 5 gigs in a month.

AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon seem to want you to pay for more data even though it makes no sense on the consumer end to do so.

One way to get around the data limit is to have Comcast as your ISP for your computer.  Comcast has a roaming WiFi and you can hook up to it if there is a signal.  You can also reduce data use if you use a public WiFi.  Many coffee shops and restaurants have WiFi as do libraries and some churches.

One way to get around the data limit is to have Comcast as your ISP for your computer.  Comcast has a roaming WiFi and you can hook up to it if there is a signal.  You can also reduce data use if you use a public WiFi.  Many coffee shops and restaurants have WiFi as do libraries and some churches.