Droid 4 with foreign SIM

[avrave]

Hi, I was looking to upgrade my phone before I travel to England. I was looking at getting a global phone. Currently, I have a droid 2 and would like to have a similar phone.

At the Verizon store (both online and in store), they do not list the Droid 4 as a global phone. However, on the Motorola website, they do list the droid 4 as "global ready." The only phones that verizon said were "global ready" were the droid razr, droid razr max, and iphone 4s. At the moment, I am leaning towards trying out the iphone 4s.

I keep finding conflicting information on using a droid 4 globally. Is the phone locked? Is there anything I would need to do with Verizon before I can use the droid 4 on a UK local carrier?

 

[silver6054]

Hi, I was looking to upgrade my phone before I travel to England. I was looking at getting a global phone. Currently, I have a droid 2 and would like to have a similar phone.

At the Verizon store (both online and in store), they do not list the Droid 4 as a global phone. However, on the Motorola website, they do list the droid 4 as "global ready." The only phones that verizon said were "global ready" were the droid razr, droid razr max, and iphone 4s. At the moment, I am leaning towards trying out the iphone 4s.

I keep finding conflicting information on using a droid 4 globally. Is the phone locked? Is there anything I would need to do with Verizon before I can use the droid 4 on a UK local carrier?

The droid 4 is now global with ICS, it is listed as a global phone in the global phone section of the website.


It's unlocked, so you can use a foreign sim (microsim)

 

[avrave]

silver6054, thanks for the reply.

When I was at the store, I noticed the demo models for the droid 4 were running ICS, and I brought it up. The sales women said that while the droid 4 had the ICS, the global functionality isn't available yet, but will be in a few weeks whenever its ready.

I don't know if they just are wrong, or if there is something they aren't telling us. If you look at International Cell Phones - Global-Ready Phones| Verizon Wireless you see the droid razr and iphone 4s listed, but not the droid 4. They were right about those 2 being global ready at the Verizon store, but also said that the droid 4 was not global ready.

Also, everything I've looked up on Google has to do with the razr being international, I've found little about the droid 4 using local GSM cards.

 

[silver6054]

You have to love the Verizon Wireless web site. I was talking about the Global phone page, Global Phone

Which does show the Droid 4!

There are lots of reports on other forums of this phone working fine internationally, both with the Vodafone sim and the local SIM, and the UK was one of the first success reports. I am currently in the US, so I can't confirm easily, but I can put a foreign SIM in my phone and it accepts it without complaint (carrier block prevents a GSM connection to a us carrier) See Droid 4 working in the UK - success and howto - xda-developers for example, originally dealing with the ICS leak but the OTA is the same.

 

[Big D]

I can confirm that an ICS D4 will work with a SIM card in London. I bought one from Car Phone Warehouse (so funny) for 10 pounds that gave me 300 minutes/300 texts and unlimited data. I never got data to work though. Something about manually changing the apn (which is only slightly less complicated than advanced molecular biophysics).

But yeah, it definitely works.

 

[silver6054]

I can confirm that an ICS D4 will work with a SIM card in London. I bought one from Car Phone Warehouse (so funny) for 10 pounds that gave me 300 minutes/300 texts and unlimited data. I never got data to work though. Something about manually changing the apn (which is only slightly less complicated than advanced molecular biophysics).

But yeah, it definitely works.

I used the Talkmobile SIMs from Carphone Warehouse (on my D2G, haven't been there since I got the 4). Worked fine, and the site has documentation on how to set the APN, which worked fine (on that phone!). Didn't get unlimited, but 25MB per day for 15 cents, which is much much better than Verizon's 100MB for $25!

 

[Big D]

Maybe I'm just stoopit.

 

[MidnightLight]

I used my Droid 4 ICS successfully on GSM networks in Asia last month. Worked like a charm.

 

[mikegannon]

I used my Droid 4 ICS successfully on GSM networks in Asia last month. Worked like a charm.

OK, I just obtained a Droid 4 on my last visit to the US and when I got it him did the OTA update via wifi to ICS and inserted my O2 SIM and verified that it registered on the O2 network and could see HSDPA/HSUPA networks. Great !

Now for the interesting question.
If I take this phone back to the US and in Global Mode with my UK O2 SIM installed, will it allow me to obtain service whilst roaming.

Verizon do not have any roaming agreement with O2 so, my question is this. In Global Mode will the phone let me select AT&T or T-Mobile 2G service at 850/1900Mhz or even AT&T 4G service at 700Mhz which is the same band as Verizon ?

Or should I take a backup phone on my next trip.

Thanks

Mike

 

[Benton]

With a foreign SIM card in the Droid 4 (or any Verizon global ready phone), once in the US you will not be able to use the GSM services of AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. I live in the US using Verizon service and have a Vodaphone account as well for mainly Asia travels. I insert the Vodaphone SIM when I travel abroad but if I leave it in place when I return to the US the phone goes straight to the Verizon service only. There may be hacks for the radio to avoid this but I am not aware of any.

 

[mikegannon]

With a foreign SIM card in the Droid 4 (or any Verizon global ready phone), once in the US you will not be able to use the GSM services of AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. I live in the US using Verizon service and have a Vodaphone account as well for mainly Asia travels. I insert the Vodaphone SIM when I travel abroad but if I leave it in place when I return to the US the phone goes straight to the Verizon service only. There may be hacks for the radio to avoid this but I am not aware of any.

Thanks

I suspected as much.

Mike

 

[dh98402]

Droid 4 does work with micro sim in UK

I have a Droid 4 and have been to the UK a few times over the last few months. Ever since they did the ICS update the global settings are unlocked and it will take a foreign sim. You can pick up a pay as you go sim at W.H. Smith at Heathrow airport and it will work right off with voice calls but you will have to go online to get the settings for using data on the Droid 4 before it will work correctly. My phone always shows the sim as unknown but works just fine anyway. If you haven't used your phone globally before you will need to check your network settings once you have your new sim in and verify what network it is set on. You can top up as they call it, add more money to your pay as you go card from your phone or at many local shops or online. Hope this information is helpful.

 

[ndd]

I have a Droid 4 and have been to the UK a few times over the last few months. Ever since they did the ICS update the global settings are unlocked and it will take a foreign sim. You can pick up a pay as you go sim at W.H. Smith at Heathrow airport and it will work right off with voice calls but you will have to go online to get the settings for using data on the Droid 4 before it will work correctly. My phone always shows the sim as unknown but works just fine anyway. If you haven't used your phone globally before you will need to check your network settings once you have your new sim in and verify what network it is set on. You can top up as they call it, add more money to your pay as you go card from your phone or at many local shops or online. Hope this information is helpful.

does that mean that charges for voice and data would be pay as you go? I ask because I was on a trip to Ireland and one of the other guys had an iPhone. he didn't realize that it was a global phone, and only found out when he was notified of the charges he was incurring with AT&T. apparently the phone was using data to keep up to date and he didn't realize it.

 

[dh98402]

does that mean that charges for voice and data would be pay as you go? I ask because I was on a trip to Ireland and one of the other guys had an iPhone. he didn't realize that it was a global phone, and only found out when he was notified of the charges he was incurring with AT&T. apparently the phone was using data to keep up to date and he didn't realize it.

Yes, using the local sim would be pay as you go. If his iphone was on the AT&T network with a global plan as it sounds from what you posted he would have been charged based on what the rates where for the AT&T global voice and data usage, sounds like he didn't swap out his sim card or disable the data on his phone.

The pay as you go I referred to was with switching out my sim card once I got to the UK. The pay as you go sim that runs on the Lebara network International Calls & Free SIMs | Pay As You Go | Lebara with their pay as you go you "top up" or recharge the balance available to use. You can check the data and voice rates on their website based on the country you want to use the sim in and it will tell you how much the rates are. You wouldn't get billed by AT&T also because you would already have removed the AT&T sim card and installed the Lebara sim which then the only charges you would get would be for the usage on the Lebara network. Hope this answers your question.

 

[droidbound]

So far I have always used a simple cell phone with a pre-paid SIM for my visits in Germany.
This time I did not want to go without the smartphone functionality, especially Google Maps which I plan to use quite a bit.
So I had the German provider, Simyo, send me a microSIM replacement card, popped it into the Droid 4, set the network preference to GSM and could make phone calls within minutes.
For Internet connectivity Simyo send three text messages to my phone and those made the necessary changes to network settings after a reboot.
So far, so good. Google maps works, push notifications for Gmail work.

The only thing I'm curious about is what will happen when I go back to the US and return to the Verizon SIM again. Simyo did erase all the Verizon APNs, and it's going to be interesting to see if Verizon is as smart and easy in restoring those as it was to get Simyo working on this phone....

I'll report back in a couple of weeks if someone's interested....

Edit: Two weeks later: This was way easier than I expected. Returning to the States I just put the Verizon SIM back in, and everything switched back to the Verizon service. No problems whatsoever...

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