My son is studying abroad in Germany, and his phone just crapped out. He’s got a German SIM card, and what we’d like to do is buy a new(ish) phone there, and then when he returns to the US he can just put his US SIM card in & use it as his phone here.
The good news is that we use AT&T here in the US, which is GSM standard like Germany, but beyond that I’m wary that there’s some technical component I’m missing. Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated…
Honestly, charger wall wart is all I can think of, everything else is bog standard. Taking an American carrier GSM phone TO Europe can be fraught if you don’t have T-Mobile but coming the other way ought to be easy peasy.
Since you know about GSM vs CDMA, you already hit the biggest single snag.
A few issues that you want to be aware of.
while it’s normally more of an issue with US phones going overseas, do make sure before he returns (or when he buys the phone) that it is unlocked, ie not restricted to a using a single networks SIM cards. This can normally be requested very easily, especially if the phone is paid for, but it is something to keep at the back of the mind.
While it is unlikely to be an issue, different bands (frequencies) are popular between different carriers and different countries. Most newer devices support a wide array of bands, and should have more than enough overlap to work fine, but if you’re buying an older model, there is always room for gaps.
Neither of these should be game changer for your scenario, but are factors to be aware of of.
The wife and I both have phones we bought in Bangkok that we brought here to Hawaii. I can’t think of any issues we had.
There can be issues with 5G. The 5G network as it is currently being built in Germany does not use the EHF/millimetre wave band with frequencies between 24 and 49 GHz; rather, the German implementation of 5G is at frequencies between 3 and 4 GHz. Consequently, 5G phones sold in Germany are not compatible with EHF - at least this is the situation for the iPhone 12. As I understand it, such phones, if bought in Germany, will still work in the American 5G network at the lower frequencies, but they won’t benefit from the higher bandwidth that the EHF frequencies offer.
do the charging plug ins still matter between the eu/us?
Nearly every modern phone is charged via USB now, so I’d suggest just ignoring the supplied charger (there might not even be one supplied with some phones) and getting a suitable USB charging plug back home.
This was helpful, everyone, thank you…we ended up finding a (as someone said) “bog standard” Samsung on Germany’s Amazon site, and other than as some pointed out the charger, looks perfectly adaptable to the US. [but even then, good to have an extra Germany-compatible USB charger for next time we travel there]
Where in Germany is he? I’ll sell him my Galaxy Note 9. Purchased it in the States and using it just fine in Germany.
It’s too late now, I think. But, it’s probably much cheaper on the US Amazon site rater than Germany’s.
Ah, thanks, he’s in Mannheim, but yes he went ahead and ordered one. And yes, similar phones were more expensive on Germany’s Amazon, but the one he bought was 23% off and ended up being a little cheaper (assuming like models, which is sometimes hard to figure out). As it is I’m just glad to get a phone in his hands within a week given he’s doing a lot of one day trips to nearby cities.