Tips for traveling out of country

[alucardx]

I'm going to Barbados for a week and don't plan on using my phone unless i have to.

Here's what i'm thinking so far, please let me know if anyone else has any ideas. Basically I want to avoid any international fees or hidden fees for just having the phone on.

• Goto messaging app and turn off auto-retrieval of text messages
• Turn on airplane mode to disable cell phone / radio capability. This should prevent me from receiving calls or making them.
• Turn on wifi if i find hotspots on the island and want to browse the internet or check email.

 

[Qwerty0912]

I was just in Aruba and all I did was turn the phone into airplane mode and enabled wi-fi. I was still able to use everything that I needed on my phone but wasn't charged anything on my bill.

 

[mslal]

Good advice; I'm going to Europe for spring break, and was wondering what to do with my Droid.

 

[BostonBill]

Does putting your Droid in airplane mode also increase battery life considerably?

 

[JFrawls]

Great thread! I was wondering what to do with my phone while I go on a cruise to Barbados myself... truth be told I wasn't sure if it would work at all... I haven't seen that map lol

 

[Qwerty0912]

Does putting your Droid in airplane mode also increase battery life considerably?

To be honest don't know about the battery life with normal use as I wasn't using my phone nearly as much as I normally would have. With how much I was using it in airplane mode I really only charged it twice for the entire week that I was there.

Sorry can't be anymore specific than that.

 

[BostonBill]

Does putting your Droid in airplane mode also increase battery life considerably?

To be honest don't know about the battery life with normal use as I wasn't using my phone nearly as much as I normally would have. With how much I was using it in airplane mode I really only charged it twice for the entire week that I was there.

Sorry can't be anymore specific than that.

No worries. hopefully you had more to do in Aruba then check the battery life on your Droid. Did you have fun?

 

[fredm74]

Great thread. I am going to Costa Rica in the summer and thought about this as well. The only app I thought of using was Gtalk and possibly using Google Voice. I know Gtalk is a free service but wasn't sure if using GoogleVoice would count against my minutes. Wi-fi is definitely going to be used. Other than that, I don't see the need to use my Verizon plan while flying overseas. Any suggestions would be great.

-Fred

 

[jefbystereo]

Airplane mode then turning on wifi is the winning combo if you want to take your phone. That way you will block all fee loaded messages, calls, and data but still be able to surf the net, and if you get wifi voip working, even make calls.
droid does- international

 

[Qwerty0912]

Does putting your Droid in airplane mode also increase battery life considerably?

To be honest don't know about the battery life with normal use as I wasn't using my phone nearly as much as I normally would have. With how much I was using it in airplane mode I really only charged it twice for the entire week that I was there.

Sorry can't be anymore specific than that.

No worries. hopefully you had more to do in Aruba then check the battery life on your Droid. Did you have fun?

Tried to make it so I would never have to come back....obviously didn't work out so well for me.

 

[alucardx]

Airplane mode then turning on wifi is the winning combo if you want to take your phone. That way you will block all fee loaded messages, calls, and data but still be able to surf the net, and if you get wifi voip working, even make calls.
droid does- international

exactly.. this article describes some methods

Transforming Your Cellphone to Make Cheap International Calls - NYTimes.com

 

[Stormwing]

I may be headed out of the country too, and other than the airplane mode thing I picked up an external battery for all the times I might be on the road with no outlet and/or pc, and based on another thread downloaded Maverick for offline mapping.

Couple questions though, is there any way for emails and other web-based data to be cached/read offline? And can verizon suspend my data plan for the time that I'm gone? How would I do that?

 

[alucardx]

I may be headed out of the country too, and other than the airplane mode thing I picked up an external battery for all the times I might be on the road with no outlet and/or pc, and based on another thread downloaded Maverick for offline mapping.

Couple questions though, is there any way for emails and other web-based data to be cached/read offline? And can verizon suspend my data plan for the time that I'm gone? How would I do that?

not sure about caching or an offline mode. i guess you could test to see how it works by putting it in airline mode and see how things load.

you'd have to call cust service about suspending your plan. since we're forced to have a data plan with the droid i don't think you could cancel it then sign up for it again.

 

[alucardx]

just did some digging around on Maverick, it looks pretty cool and works fairly well even with the free version for just looking at maps offline.

check out:
Maverick - GPS navigation for Android with offline maps support.
Online Help: Maverick
List Of MapTilePacks - AndNavWiki

 

[PatG]

just did some digging around on Maverick, it looks pretty cool and works fairly well even with the free version for just looking at maps offline.

check out:
Maverick - GPS navigation for Android with offline maps support.
Online Help: Maverick
List Of MapTilePacks - AndNavWiki

So let me see if I understand since I am going to Switzerland in a couple of weeks - I can download Maverick to my phone, create a map of the area I am in using Google Maps and then download this map to the phone. Then Maverick will track my position on the map?

So GPS on the Droid works overseas; it can actually access the Satellites over there?