Buying A Cell Phone To Take Back To Philippines

[Adventurer]

yeah bundy, i have been learning about that .. the phone i plan to buy for my fiancee is a HTC ChaCha which I can pick up at Kmart for $99 but normally sells up to $200+. It is locked to Vodafone but I can get it unlocked online free. The only thing I'm worried about is that I think Vodafone is on 850 band and I'm not sure if that will work with Smart & Sun but I guess I can just try...

[Steve & Myrlita]

yeah bundy, i have been learning about that .. the phone i plan to buy for my fiancee is a HTC ChaCha which I can pick up at Kmart for $99 but normally sells up to $200+. It is locked to Vodafone but I can get it unlocked online free. The only thing I'm worried about is that I think Vodafone is on 850 band and I'm not sure if that will work with Smart & Sun but I guess I can just try...

Check the specs. If it is a quad band and you can unlock it you're golden. If it's a dual band only then sorry, it won't work here. You need to have 900 & 1800 to work here. Edited June 12, 2012 by Steve & Myrlita

[Dave Hounddriver]

3 weeks ago I bought a locked, new, Nokia C3 in Canada. I liked the phone as it is low cost but quad band with all the basic functions. Cost $75 or 3,100 pesos. Yesterday I went to get it unlocked. What a shock. It used to be 500 pesos to get a phone like that unlocked. Now the quotes are 1500 to 2000. I took the 1500 peso option and the phone works great. Total cost to me 4,600 pesos and guess what, the shop where I got the phone unlocked had the same phone available, new, for 4,550 pesos. There are no more savings to be had that way, or so it seems to me.

[billten]

There are no more savings to be had that way, or so it seems to me

Yup, i have the same issue with a couple of Motorola phones i brought over. Also the antanna's in them seemed as though they were 'tuned' wrong. They worked 'ok', most of the time, but my crappy Nokia would have 5 bars of signal and the Moto would have a choppy signal and be dropping calls. From that point on, i just bought cheap local phones.

Edited June 14, 2012 by billten

[Adventurer]

I purchased 2 X Xperia Ray's, spent a lot of time researching and this was my final choice, I picked them up for just over $200 AU each NEW plus standard shipping costs + Ebay accesoories - I got a Sandisk 32 gig sd card for each about $20 each + 1 hard shell case + 3 matte finsihed high quality screen protectors. I will let my girlfriend pick her own girly case herself when I get back in 2 weeks. I wanted a spare phone so I can have one for smart ( I used my Nokia N8) and another for Sun (will use the xperia Ray). I did consider dual sim phones but there is little options here in Aussie for them.

These phones are a great buy I think, I got 1 white one for her & a black one for me. She is going to go nuts when she see's it I'm sure :). Well I spent about 2 days researching, probably would have been more efficient to just go to shop and spent $400 each on whatever they had but hey I learned a lot about the latest and recent phones so if anyone has any questions I'm now a smartphone expert (warning, I will forget everything in 2 weeks)....

[Call me bubba]

has any one brought over a Cellphone lately  and what was your experiences to get it "unlocked"? 

 

Total cost to me 4,600 pesos and guess what, the shop where I got the phone unlocked had the same phone available, new, for 4,550 pesos.

There are no more savings to be had that way, or so it seems to me.

 

at least if you had any issues w/it you would have slightly better CONSUMER RIGHTS than you would here in the philippines. 

[i am bob]

I just picked up a Google Nexus 4.  They come unlocked from the factory and there is only one version good for around the world anywhere.  In Canada, you can order it through the Google Playstore for $309 (8 Gb) or $359 (16 Gb).  Unfortunately I don't think you can purchase through Google if you are in the Philippines but you can still buy at most phone stores.

 

For anybody in Canada who wants one, Koodo sells them outright for $350 (16 Gb only) but only through their secondary retailers (London Drugs, Walmart, etc).  Koodo itself you have to take a plan but still there is no contract so you can opt out after a month or so if you want.  Most other Phone Dealers want more - often up to $100 or more.  I've heard in the US and GB you can get deals but not as good as buying direct from Google.

 

One point about this phone - it does not come with LTE (HSPA+ only) but I did speed tests with friends who have LTE.  Results?  Just as fast as most and even beat a couple LTE phones.  And now to tell you I lied.  They tell us that LTE isn't on the phone but apparently the Canadian versions have LTE but it has to be spoofed into working.

 

:mocking:  :thumbsup:

[dems]

Buying a Blackberry cellphone from U.S. will also work here in the Philippines.  Proof is my Blackberry Storm, when the package arrived, it automatically reconfigured.  But I don't know if Blackberry Z10 is the same.  

[i am bob]

Buying a Blackberry cellphone from U.S. will also work here in the Philippines. Proof is my Blackberry Storm, when the package arrived, it automatically reconfigured. But I don't know if Blackberry Z10 is the same.

Be careful with the Blackberries. Some will work and some won't. Check to see what radio frequencies are set up on each phone. Every model is different and the was no reasonable rhyme or reason to what each one had installed.

Sent by Gaseous Monkeys using tin cans, a very long string and Tapatalk...

[robert k]

I lost my beloved / hated Samsung Galaxy Music Duos in my recent trip. I bought it unlocked for $135 shipped. The radio did not work in the RP, did work but was annoying in the US because I would accidentally hit the music button. As a phone it worked great, took fair pictures/video, the dual sim worked but it was not dual standby so you had to switch sims manually. It also drained the battery fast if both sims were active. The internet functioned well when I had a data plan but the 3.14 inch screen had me reaching for my cheater glasses that I use for contract small print. Still good value for money but I would recommend the Galaxy Y cheaper and no annoying music function. The dual sim was handy because one could be your unlimited data plan and the other your phone for talk and text. The reason for not talking on your data plan is because data may stop working (happened to me a couple of times before I caught on) when you run out of minutes even though you have days of unlimited internet left. Better yet, the Galaxy Ace has a larger screen (3.5 inch) in the same price range for a cheap smart phone. I did not bring my laptop this time but hopefully you could tether a smartphone to a computer for broadband internet

 

I thought I would use internet cafes to do my heavy lifting online but I found that my phone was faster than the desktops in the cafes because they were full of garbage, viruses and conflicting programs. Larger screen more capable phone for me next time.

 

The most important thing I learned is that there are so many carriers in the RP and you need to be using the same carrier as your caller (or those you are calling) to talk cheaply that it can be beneficial to buy a local cheap (700 to 1,000 piso) dual sim phone so you have a choice of carriers, Sun, Smart, Globe and so on.

 

This is based on what I observed, moving about on a handful of islands. If you stay put, a wonderphone will probably be alot less important to you but I am not going to stay indoors all the time.

 

I'm not a Samsung salesman, but I know a fair number of people who have them and in my experience the less expensive examples are fair value. I refuse to pay an unreasonable amount of money to have the latest, best obsolete in 2 years phone :1927_: . I was seriously looking at the Lenovo line of phones in the RP but I can't verify their quality, which is a shame because they seem to have some interesting models. Pick your own poison. :tiphat: