To many Americans, staying in touch with a cell phone while in Europe can seem difficult and expensive. But savvy travelers know it doesn’t have to be. Having a phone while you’re there can be a major time saver and convenience. This article tells you how to stay in touch and save money.
Advanced mobile phone usage in Lucca, Italy
Why don’t US cell phones “just work” in Europe? For various reasons, the United States developed and deployed wireless technologies that were incompatible with those deployed in the Rest Of the World, which went with a standard called GSM (“Global System for Mobiles” – one of the reasons why Europeans use the term “mobile” and not “cell phone”).
This meant that for many years, the only option for US travelers to Europe was to rent a GSM phone, which was expensive and inconvenient. No one could reach you on your US cell phone number; you had the hassle and cost of receiving and returning the phone, and both handset rental and calls were astonishingly expensive.
GSM comes to America
Today, you can buy US mobile phones that use the GSM system from AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile. So why don’t these phones “just work” in Europe? Although they use GSM, they work on different radio frequencies. To function in Europe, a GSM phone must operate (at the very least) on the 1800MHz frequency; to get the best European coverage it must operate on both 900MHz and 1800MHz. And this is just for regular GSM — for 3G services, you need 2100MHz in Europe and 1900MHz in the US.
The net? Make sure you buy a phone that clearly states is can be used internationally or is called a “World Phone”. If in doubt, find out what frequencies it offers and check them. There are more and more multi-band GSM phones coming on to the market every month, so the good news is that it’s now a lot easier to find a good international phone.
What if I’m on Verizon or Sprint?
Verizon uses a system called CDMA, and Sprint uses both CDMA and another proprietary system called iDEN, originally developed for Nextel. However, Verizon in particular has figured out that it is losing a lot of nice profitable international traffic as a result, and now has phones that support both US CDMA and international GSM frequencies. Verizon calls these “Global Phones“. The line-up changes every couple of months as new phones are released, but the Blackberry: Bold 9930, Torch 9850; Motorola Droid 3, Droid 2 Global; and HTC: Droid Incredible 2,Trophy are all CDMA/GSM world phones available at the time of writing.
The most significant new Global Phone for Verizon and Sprint is the iPhone 4S, which is the first Apple iPhone that works on both CDMA and GSM networks. Verizon iPhone 4 and iPad 2 customers are out of luck — both are CDMA-only and will not work in Europe.
If you read the previous article, you now know the answer to the question “why doesn’t my American cell phone just work in Europe?” and what to do about it. This article will take a look at the various data services that are on offer for Americans who want to send e-mail, surf the net or transmit digital photographs back to base while traveling in Europe or elsewhere.
There are four types of data service available in Europe that you’re likely to see (if you’re wondering why GSM is the only technology covered, read the previous article). Continue reading →
An extremely common question, especially for those heading to Europe for the first time, is what kind of plug adapter to use for their cameras, laptops, phones, iPads etc. In this video, I take a look at three common adapter types and show you how they work. I also show you what to look for to make sure your particular device will work on European voltages, and what kind of devices won’t work.
This really is one of those topics where literally taking a look at the converters is so much better than reading about them. Enjoy!
We recently got back from a photo trip to Tuscany, where we got to see the July Siena Palio. This short (1 min 30 sec) video gives you a glimpse of the intense emotions of the Sienese around their favorite cultural festival. The video shows the drawing of the horses, where each one is randomly assigned to a contrade, who them parade the horse through the town on the way to their secret stable location (to make sure their rivals can’t nobble the horse!)
Travelling with your AT&T iPhone to Europe? Here’s how you can make sure it works when you get there and avoid a giant bill when you get back. Who doesn’t like to save money?
First, a quick note for Verizon iPhone 4 / iPad 2 owners: sorry, your phone/tablet won’t work in Europe. See my other article on cellphones in Europe to understand why, and what your options are.
If you haven’t done so already, register with AT&T’s MyWireless web site so that you can make changes to your phone plan options online. Log in with your wireless number and PIN code, so that you get to the home screen for your wireless service. Look for the “Quick links” section in the top-right quadrant of the page, which will look like this:
Renting a villa in Italy, France or Spain isn’t just for millionaires or recluses. Perhaps surprisingly, villa rental can be more reasonable than staying in a hotel, especially if you’re a family a larger group (though being a millionaire does help if you want to rent an entire Tuscan village from the Ferragamo family — yes, the shoe people).
Early morning sunlight rises over the patio of an Italian villa in Chianti, Tuscany, Italy
There are just five simple steps:
1) Decide if a villa vacation is for you. The pros are that you’ll have a base for a week or two that you can come back to each night. You can stay in all day, lounge by the pool or in the garden, take in the culture somewhere else, eat in or out… all up to you. The cons are that there’s no daily maid service or other hotel amenities, you are in the same place (so visiting places far from base means a longer round trip), and you have to keep the place reasonably clean and tidy. You’ll likely be doing cooking yourself if you stay in, though you can also hire a cook. Personally, I am happy to trade hotel amenities for a more relaxed and flexible vacation.
2) Pick a country and general geography — South of France, Tuscany etc — based on the kind of things you want to do and see. Get a few guidebooks to places you think you might like to go. My personal favorites are the Dorling Kindersley “Eyewitness” travel guides (DK guides), and the Rough Guides. I like the DK guides because they’re chock full of photographs so you can get a better idea of what a place is really like, and they’re also a good starting point for planning photography trips. The Rough Guides are impeccably researched with good writing on places, history, art and contemporary life, with great vignettes on the famous locals. However, although brimming with great maps to get you around, they are sparsely illustrated when it comes to photos. Continue reading →
We are starting the new year with site improvements for lodgephoto.com and this blog. We have moved to a hosting company with far better web server and database performance, which substantially improves the response speed of the blog, in particular.
We’ve also re-vamped our home page to be a slideshow of some of our most popular and dramatic photographs, and we fixed problems with our email sign-up. We hope you find these changes increase your enjoyment of the site and help you find the images you want.
Thinking about buying a new digital camera? The best advice I can give you is to avoid maxing out megapixels and you’ll get sharper photographs with less grain (noise). This seems counter-intuitive, but is the effect of camera technology running into physical limitations of lenses and light itself.
For a full-frame (35mm) SLR camera, 25 megapixels is about as good as it gets.
For a smaller “APS” digital SLR camera, about 20% smaller than 35mm, 10 megapixels is the point of diminishing returns, and 15 megapixels is on the edge (and has noticeably more noise)
For a pocket camera where the sensor is about 1/5th the size of 35mm, 4-5 megapixels is the point of diminishing returns, 10 megapixels is pushing it even at very wide apertures, and 12 megapixel or greater pocket cameras will take disappointingly fuzzy pictures at aperture f/2.8 or greater.
