The rule on our honeymoon was made by the second day in London: I had to stop and kiss my new bride before I was allowed to walk into a cellphone shop. Because let’s face it, I was going into all of them. Vodafone, O2, Orange, Three, Carphone Warehouse, I was even looking at a phone display in Harrod’s for crying out loud. Partly it’s because I was in the market – my domestic phone of record at the time was the Bibendumesque Nokia 6620, with the Moto V180 as the hastily-acquired travel phone and a couple other random handsets floating around back in California. I was looking for something that would combine Bluetooth, speakerphone, EDGE speed, a top-notch screen, two-day battery life and quality reception all in one while still fitting in the change pocket of my jeans.
I ended up holding off on a purchase – partly because the dollar was struggling against the pound and we’d just paid for a wedding, but also in anticipation of a forthcoming Apple phone. Which turned out to be the ROKR, a rebranded Moto E398 with an iTunes-compliant player in the software. I shook my head and ordered the Moto V635 on the spot, the phone that had drawn my attention everywhere from Kensington to Bath to Edinburgh.
When we went back in 2007, I did take a curious look at the MOTOFONE F3 (which ultimately came to me as a Christmas present) but I wasn’t looking at phones otherwise. In fact, I donated that V635 a week before heading out of the country – because the iPhone had landed. It had a real web browser, none of this WAP-stack nonsense, naturally it handled iTunes playback, its email was superior to anything on any other phone not made by Research In Motion – and it basically brought an end to phone glee.
Now that my iPhone 4S is unlocked, I’m dreaming of the Cotswolds again, so I looked at the SIM-only plans out there now. Three – which started life as a 3G-only provider and was running in a weak fifth place in 2005 – offers a plan on a rolling one-month contract with 300 minutes (outgoing only, remember), 3000 texts, and unlimited data – for all of £15 a month. Under the circumstances, I can’t fathom using anything else, although there are plans from Orange or O2 that offer unlimited texts, 1 GB of data, and some minutes above and beyond the usual top-up for £25-30, and I believe my current Virgin Mobile could be switched to a pay-as-you-go setup that includes 1 GB of data and unlimited texting with every £15 top-up.
I say all that to say this: there’s really not much out there in the way of alternatives for somebody with an unlocked iPhone in the United States. You can roll the dice on T-Mobile and hope you spend your time in the parts of San Francisco where they lit up 1900Mhz HSPA+ coverage, but otherwise you’re back to the best speeds 2006 has to offer – and damnably, most of the GSM-based MVNOs in this country are backboned by T-Mob. The one exception seems to be Straight Talk, a WalMart-based MVNO that offers unlimited everything for $45 and appears to have AT&T as its backing network in some areas. But then you’re giving up visual voicemail, for one, and the configuration process for data and MMS appears to be less than smooth. Factor in the presumed move to a work-provided Verizon iPhone sixth-gen when it ships, and the juice ain’t worth the squeeze – looking at cost savings of less than $20 a month.
But there’s almost no 4G to speak of in Europe, so an iPhone 4S is ideal for an all-purpose travel phone. Which is good, because my tiny Sony Ericsson Z520 is starting to flake. More on it later…