Travel Technology - ATT or Verizon and Blackberry or Iphone?

Here is the situation; I am a frequent business traveler in the domestic US with 6-8 overseas trips annually to Asia, Brazil and Europe. I am currently with TMobile and have a great priced family plan and only use a Razr and only for voice.

My reception with TMobile is terrible and I need to change carriers. I am still looking for a good family plan (other family members only need voice) but with good international coverage. I am considering Verizon and ATT. I am also looking at moving up to a Blackberry or Iphone (my only needs would be to receive and respond to email on the road).

I am looking at the best combination of price for a family plan; price for a device and data plan and international coverage without huge suprise costs. I would be staying with TMobile but their signal strength is terrible for me.

I would appreciate any recommendations based on personal experience to my criteria above. Thank you.

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The international data plan on VZW with their BBs is very good. Their voice rates suck though.

The RAZR is considered to be one of the poorer RF performers out there. Try a new phone before jumping ship to VZW/AT&T's much more expensive plans.

While I agree with gfdave that the RAZR is a lousy phone, I made the switch from T-Mobile to Verizon about 3 years ago and haven't looked back. I lived in a canyon in CA that had no TM signal.

If you switch carriers, and only need your phone for email, you might want to get one of their freebie phones and pick up a cheapie old phone on Ebay. (Switching phones on VZW is an automated phone call, switching on ATT is a SIM swap)

Personally, I'm not a fan of iPhone or BB. I'm an HTC guy and currently use the xv6800. I'm waiting for the new HTC, or a Verizon iPhone with a real keyboard (which is my primary hatred of the iPhone, second is hackability).

-SF

Here is why, currently I am a Verizon customer and I have their World Phone Z6C world edition. If I was to use this phone in Europe or Asia (yes it works in those locations since it has a SIM card for GSM as well as CDMA for the US), I would pay very high per minute charges. But, Verizon will unlock the GSM portion of the phone allowing you to use other carriers cards in your phone. This is what I do and I get a local pre-paid SIM in the country I am in and this reduces my costs significantly as compared to Verizon. Here is a real world example in Singapore I use a SingTel SIM card (pre-paid available at any 7-11 in Singapore), I put about $20 SGD about $15 USD on the phone for local calls and calls back to the US. This usually lasts me one week, I can always add more to the card if necessary. If I used the Verizon SIM (advantage same number), I would get about 5 minutes of talk time to the US for the same price.
This is how I handle communicating my number to people who need to know. I keep the SIM card for countries that I travel to often (Singapore, Germany, Italy, Great Britain) therefore I keep the same number. I set my out of office indicator on email to list the phone number I will be using that week as well as the local time zone I will be in.
Previously I used to carry 2 phones my Verizon for in country and a unlocked GSM phone for everywhere else.
This works for me it may not work for you. And as to BB or IPhone I would vote for neither one of them, I do not do email or surf the web from a phone. That is what my high speed hotel Internet connection is for.

One other place you need to look at is...do any of your international trips abroad include Japan or Korea? They are the weird bunch (though their use of cell phones are really ahead of everyone else) because they do not use GSM or CDMA. The only compatible ones are 3G phones, and they need to receive a special frequency on that one too.

So your options are limited if you want to use your phone in those two countries. If that is the case, I'd go with AT&T 3G phones, but make sure your 3G phone is equipped to handle UMTS 2100! Fortunately, the iPhone does.

Another huge plus of the iPhone is that it already comes equipped to handle Japanese/Korean/Chinese texts and web-browsing. Most other phones can't handle them without some tweaking which will certainly void your warranty.

I have ATT and Verizon. Dont even think about it, Verizon.

I used an iPhone in Japan recently and it worked well. I use the phone only for emergencies so buying a SIM for every country doesn't work for me. (Obviously I'm with ATT)

Unless your business is paying for the data, reading your email on the iPhone (unless you're using the wifi option) is a killer. The data roaming charges are out of this world.

The new BlackBerry Tour also works in Japan, while the older BlackBerry 8830 World phone does not. It looks like the newer phones are starting to support their technology as well.

I have ATT and Verizon. Dont even think about it, Verizon.

I think you're saying, "Don't even think about it, [go with] Verizon."
And not, "Don't even think about it, [that carrier named] Verizon."

If so, I completely agree.

I'm in the SF Bay Area. I had Verizon and switched to AT&T. When on Verizon, I had rock-solid reception everywhere. Now, I drop calls on a daily basis, usually in my car. My phone will have 4 bars and be on HSDPA, then in the space of a few hundred feet it will drop to 1 bar, drop the call, and then pop back to 4 bars and HSDPA. I had been unhappy with the handset choices on Verizon, but having a cool phone isn't so great when you're constantly dropping calls. I'm moving back soon, probably when Verizon picks up an Android phone...

Now, it is handy to be able to drop a European SIM card into my AT&T phone for my occasional trips overseas. But it's annoying when my reception in Europe is so much better than it is in Silicon Valley...

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I have ATT and Verizon. Dont even think about it, Verizon.

I think you're saying, "Don't even think about it, [go with] Verizon."
And not, "Don't even think about it, [that carrier named] Verizon."

If so, I completely agree.

I'm in the SF Bay Area. I had Verizon and switched to AT&T. When on Verizon, I had rock-solid reception everywhere. Now, I drop calls on a daily basis, usually in my car. My phone will have 4 bars and be on HSDPA, then in the space of a few hundred feet it will drop to 1 bar, drop the call, and then pop back to 4 bars and HSDPA. I had been unhappy with the handset choices on Verizon, but having a cool phone isn't so great when you're constantly dropping calls. I'm moving back soon, probably when Verizon picks up an Android phone...

Now, it is handy to be able to drop a European SIM card into my AT&T phone for my occasional trips overseas. But it's annoying when my reception in Europe is so much better than it is in Silicon Valley...

Sorry, that wasn't as clear as I had meant ;). Let me try again. Get a Verizon phone. Either an international capable Blackberry (not all of theirs are) or possibly wait for the HTC TouchPro 2. But go with Verizon.

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Definitely a BlackBerry on Verizon. You can't beat their international email plans, and the Blackberry does do email better than the iPhone.

For email the blackberry is a no brainer. I love the iPhone as an all-in-one device but you could not pay me to switch to ATT and it is inferior to BB for email and texting.

As for choice of carriers sprint has been berry berry good to me but Verizon has a good rep. Either way your choice of phones will be limited as they run on CDMA in the states so you'll need a quad-band phone to get overseas service.

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For email the blackberry is a no brainer. I love the iPhone as an all-in-one device but you could not pay me to switch to ATT and it is inferior to BB for email and texting.

As for choice of carriers sprint has been berry berry good to me but Verizon has a good rep. Either way your choice of phones will be limited as they run on CDMA in the states so you'll need a quad-band phone to get overseas service.

Some of the more recent Verizon Blackberries work outside the US. Not all so check.

[the iPhone] is inferior to BB for email and texting.



I'm not sure I agree with this. I use both, and while the BB obviously is better if you have a corporate exchange server, I prefer the email on the iPhone. I have it set up with iMap on Gmail, so it's functionally equivalent to exchange in that respect (syncs with home computer, online, etc.). In terms of typing, I've gotten pretty used to the screen input and it's less fatiguing on the fingers. The typing correction is far superior on the iPhone than on BB, and I waste a lot less time with things like numbers and special characters.

Also, at least on my BB there's no html email, whereas on iPhone it's just like it's on my computer screen, just smaller. Integration with address book is superior or at least as good as on the blackberry.

Obviously one has to try both to say what works for you, but I find the iPhone preferable. I don't think the BB is a clear-cut winner on this one.

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The term "IMAP" is not an Apple thing so it is all caps, not little i big next letter. :p

I agree that the best BB integration is with corporate systems. I have had a lot of trouble typing on the touch screens, even with their corrctive/predictive text. That's not just an iPhone thing; it goes for all touchscreens I have tried. I get great speed on a BB because I drag my fingers across the keys rather than fully lifting off the keyboard between clicks. I have had very bad experiences trying a similar tactic on a touchscreen device.

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The term "IMAP" is not an Apple thing so it is all caps, not little i big next letter. :p

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Busted. My brain knows that but my fingers react differently.

Or, um, that's what the iPhone's predictive text gave me.

I travel with both and I can't type for anything on the iPhone and my messages tend to be lengthy, so the Blackberry wins that one.

However the applications on the iPhone make it worth dragging along, if only for using Skype or one of the SIP clients. While in Croatia there was an open public WiFi area outside near a marina. The first time I had to take my laptop down there in a big busy public area with a USB phone to make a call using Skype, and I looked like an idiot, it was bright and sunny (and hot) and hard to see the screen on the laptop.

Next time I just brought the iPhone with WiFi and used Skype and it was crystal clear back to the states. After that I swore I'd always stuff the iPhone in my bag on international trips, even if it wasn't my primary email tool.

The Blackberry Bold now supports HTML and rich text type email, for what that is worth. Even in the older versions you can purchase an inexpensive software plug-in that will display HTML mail.

I'm 100% neutral on the two products. I have 'em both, like them both, neither is the perfect solution.

If email is your primary use, BB hands down. For almost everything else, iPhone - they have so many useful and fun apps. I carry both and it's extremely useful when overseas. My home country phone on the BB and local country on iPhone.

With wifi and BB on UMA, calls to USA free. I spend a couple of hours a week on conference calls back to head office, free of charge.

With wifi, iPhone and skype work perfectly, and calls to rest of world almost free with my unlimited intl calling plan.

Re networks, TMO coverage in areas can be spotty and no argument here - Vz winner hands down. But UMA on TMO works great - I never go over my bucket of minutes with this feature.

As far as customer service - well, AT&T and Vz don't know what that means, IMHO.