My experience using TP2 outside the US

[chirawat]

So I am in Thailand visiting family this month. I am fairly technical (works in IT) but don't really know much about CDMA/GSM - having been a Sprint (CDMA) user for the last 10 years. Just thought I'll share my experience with everyone with the TP2 being worldphone and all...

- First I called Sprint before the trip, they activate my phone in the Worldwide program which means I can keep the Sprint SIM in my phone and either pay $1.99 per min or pay extra $5 a month and get the rate down to $1.69 per min (ouch!). Good for emergency I guess... I used this to call my family in the US during a stopover in Japan and it worked fine. The instruction on what prefix to give to the number came in email after I called Sprint.

- Once I get to Thailand, I bought a local prepaid SIM and replace the one in my TP2 with it. The price for the SIM with activation was approx. US$2 and I also prepaid about $30 extra... With the local SIM in the phone, now my phone doesn't answer to the US number anymore, but the call price is now about 3 cents/minute for local call, and 12 cents/minute to call the US. Be aware that in the US the number will sometimes show up and sometimes show 'Unknown caller'. The first time I called my family member in the US, the person didn't pick up thinking it's some telemarketer.

- Note that prefix for calling international will be different depends on the country/service you are using. Here in Thailand, with one network you can just use plus (+) sign by long-pressing the number 0 then the US number you want to call (example: +13125551212) while with another network you need to put in '004' prefix (example: 00413125551212). I chose to go with the 004 one due to cheaper rate, and just save the numbers like that to my US contacts as 'Home2' numbers.

- Data: again depends on country/service provider. Luckily I can read Thai and was able to set mine up after a few hours Googling local forums (the jetlag did come in handy...). Customer reps in Thailand did try to be helpful but they wren't able to help me with an unfamiliar phone and it's settings. I did sign up for 6,000 minutes of EDGE (bleh - 3G is still limited here) for 199 Thai Baht per month (about US$5). This is a monthly option to my prepaid plan but the rep said all I need to do is to call them and cancel the option before I leave the country. Finally I used the EDGE instruction from one of the forums, set up a new connection under Sprint and set it as the one to use for all data connection, and lives happily ever after... The EDGE minutes are counted when the phone make data call, even though it shows connection being maintain at all time just like in the US. I have been watching my phone using about 300 minutes a day for the last few days (from the provider's account maint/check your balance screen). While it's slow, I can live with it this month, especially for 5 bucks.

- GPS is working fine after I ran QuickGPS once I figure the data connection setup. Before that it was much slower getting fix but still works.

- At least for Thailand and Japan airport, the charger works as-is, no need to get any adapter.

Hope this helps someone or at least y'all find it an entertaining read... Sawasdee from Thailand!

Irrelevant add-on - GSM version of TP2 is selling here for approx. US$800. Pretty amazing that people are buying it considering that my friends working in manager roles in companies like IBM and MSFT are getting paid about 30% to 40% what a comparable role would be paid in the US... I won't be complaining that much about my TP2 price any more... ($199 with contract extension and $100 mail-in rebate just arrived .

iPhone is about the same price and everyone (brother/sister/their spouses/aunt/uncle/etc) are using it.