Interesting Mid Price Philippine Market Cellphones

[komments]

Any advice on a temporary phone during our 3 weeks in the Philippines.

[earthdome]

For most phones all you need to do is buy a SIMM, so your US phone should work for calls/SMS. Unless your phone is an international model it may not work at high speeds for data. The US and Philippines use different bands (frequencies) for high speed data.

[MikeB]

It also has to be unlocked to the carrier. I was researching my unlocked S5 "international" version this morning to see if I could just throw a pre-paid T-Mobile sim in there if I should go to the US. Turns out "international" pertains mainly to Asia and Europe. The frequencies are not supported on the 4g network and probably aren't supported on 3g - but "may be" depending on area of coverage. Very confusing. 

[BrettGC]

Greg as soon as you walk out of immigration there will be a couple of people selling sims for a variety of networks; Sun, Smart, Globe etc.  Having used all of them I'd say they're all much the same with regards to quality.  .  I'd recommend any cheap android/windows phone unlocked for this purpose if you need the data, if not, just an even cheaper unlocked basic phone for texting and calls only.  Just get whoever sells you the sim to set up the data side of the house for you (if you need it).  I know with Smart it doesn't do it automatically once you insert the sim and power up, unlike most of the Western world. Personally I just swap out my home sim in my phone.