using iPhone out of the country?

[tony4704]

Hey all, I have a question with my iphone. I plan on taking a 2 week vacation and going to New Zealand. My wife and I have iphones (mine is jailbroken, hers is not) and I was wondering what would be my best bet so that we could use our phones down there without insane charges?

Would I need to unlock our phones and then get sim cards from their or how would that work? Thanks.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Unlock both your phones and then buy local sim cards there.

 

[pm]

Right. I concur. Unlock the phones and use SIMs you buy down there. If you aren't planning on making a lot of calls, you can get away using the AT&T international plan, but if you are planning on quite a few calls, and especially if you are thinking you'll want access to the internet on your iPhones, then you'll want to buy prepaid NZ SIMs.

When you arrive, go to a Vodafone store and talk to the salespeople to figure out what will work best.

For unlocking, jailbreak your phones and then download Ultrasn0w off of Cydia. The method that Ultrasn0w uses is a background process which will decrease battery life very slightly while it's installed, but it makes it completely reversible (uninstall it and it's gone).

As of right now, there's no unlock available for the 3.1 firmware release for 3G and 3GS iPhones, so don't upgrade to it.

 

[tony4704]

thanks for all the info guys, appreciate it. This was just what I was looking for.

So if I were to call home from my cell would that not cost anything additional to either myself or the person I am calling?

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: pm
Right. I concur. Unlock the phones and use SIMs you buy down there. If you aren't planning on making a lot of calls, you can get away using the AT&T international plan, but if you are planning on quite a few calls, and especially if you are thinking you'll want access to the internet on your iPhones, then you'll want to buy prepaid NZ SIMs.

When you arrive, go to a Vodafone store and talk to the salespeople to figure out what will work best.

For unlocking, jailbreak your phones and then download Ultrasn0w off of Cydia. The method that Ultrasn0w uses is a background process which will decrease battery life very slightly while it's installed, but it makes it completely reversible (uninstall it and it's gone).

As of right now, there's no unlock available for the 3.1 firmware release for 3G and 3GS iPhones, so don't upgrade to it.

this is key, make sure you do NOT upgrade to 3.1, or you wont be able to unlock it when you get down to NZ.

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: tony4704
thanks for all the info guys, appreciate it. This was just what I was looking for.

So if I were to call home from my cell would that not cost anything additional to either myself or the person I am calling?

I'm not sure that I understand the question. If you call anyone in the US, they won't pay anything no matter what (unless you call their cell, in which case they'll use minutes or prepaid minuteS).

If you call the US from NZ on an AT&T SIM with your normal iPhone, you will magically appear to US callers as your local US number, but will be charged for an international roaming cell phone call. I don't know what this costs, but think $4/min. as a general starting point and you'll be close. There's a $5/month plan you can get that takes this down to a less-jaw-dropping ~$2/min. call, but this is still a lot.

If you unlock your iPhones and use Vodafone SIMS and call the US on the Vodafone SIM on your unlocked iPhones, you will appear to US callers to be calling from NZ and you will be charged for an international NZ->US call. Again, no idea what this will cost, but use $1.50/min as a guess.

Alternatively, you can download Skype and then call from your iPhone when you are near a WiFi point (they are less prevalent there than in the US, but still easy enough to find). This will cost pennies per minute. I did this when I was in Europe this summer and it worked great. Practically free international cell phone calls are a neat thing.

Alternatively, you unlock your phone, buy a Vodafone SIM, and then can buy a calling card for NZ for international calls and then call the 0-800 number or whatever their free calling number is (I think it's 0800), and then enter the code, and then the US number, and then you'll pay very little for the call (I believe 800 calls in NZ on a cell are free and don't use minutes but I haven't been there in years and can't remember.)

The one thing that you definitely do not want to do is to go to NZ with an AT&T SIM in your iPhones and then do a lot if Internet stuff. This will cost you a small fortune. The iPhone helpfully will access the internet itself a lot - even when it seems like it's in standby or when you aren't doing anything on the internet at all. So if you decide on the non-unlock route, definitely make sure you turn "data roaming" to off in the Settings -> General -> Network menu.

 

[tony4704]

Got it, thanks again.

 

[pm]

Have a fun trip. Our last trip to New Zealand was the best vacation my wife and I have ever had. We thoroughly loved it.

 

[tony4704]

cool, have any recommendations on places to see??? My wife and I are actually going there for our honeymoon. We plan on traveling between both islands and seeing as much as possible.

 

[pm]

Everyone is obviously a bit different, but what my wife and I liked was doing homestays (B&B's) in smallish towns and doing a lot of walking around - not backpacking, just a lot of walking. We were there for about 7 weeks and started in the north, and headed all the way to the south island, stopping 3-4 days in each place.

We liked Auckland, but it felt like a big city. We loved staying in Tauranga and walking around Mt. Maunganui. The penisula was a bit touristy but the moutain was picturesque and it was a nice walk. We loved Whakatane and taking a trip out to see White Island (active volcano). I did some scuba there but I'm not sure that I'd recommend it - although it was definitely an experience. Rotoroa was ok - sort of on the tourist track - and there was a buried village there that was neat. Egmont National Park was spectacular. Napier with the art deco city center was cute, but not our favorite. We loved Wellington- and had a great time trekking around the city and in the hills around the city.

Christchurch is very nice, but we particularly loved the drive west up into the mountains. Lake Tekapo was gorgeous - the color of the lake and the scenery were wonderful. We liked visiting Queenstown, but staying in the smaller cuter and less touristy Arrowtown and trekking around Arrowtown was fun - we went to where the place where the scene in the 1st Lord of the Rings movie where the crossing of the ford (before Rivendell) was filmed. It was a beautiful walk. We visited Wanaka and that was a pretty drive and a cute town with great walking. There's a neat tavern about halfway between Arrowtown and Wanaka that we really liked.

We chartered a flight to Te Anau to see the Fiords and if there's any one thing that I would recommend it is doing this. If you are going to the fiords you can either take a seriously long bus ride or take a plane and taking a plane is hands down the way to go because the flight it spectacular. The plane is obviously more expensive, but it's one of those things that I hope I never forget and was almost better than seeing the fiords (although we caught them after 6 days of rain on a clear day and they were spectacular). We went to Dunedin and Invercargill and they were both very nice - but after leaving our hearts in the mountains we didn't appreciate them as much as we should have. Walking to see the penguins was fun, and we did a lot of walking by the ocean.

Beyond this, we had a perfect vacation and there was little that I would do differently and no places that we wished we hadn't ever gone to.

If you are renting a car, Rent-a-Dent had great prices and treated us very well (and they were, as the name implies, very cheap) on both the south and north islands. If you are looking for accomodation, we used kiwistays for a lot of our homestays and that worked out well, although the motels were generally very nice too.

 

[tony4704]

Sounds awesome, that is exactly what we are looking to do, home/farm stays. Some how though we have to cram the trip into only 2 weeks, I wish we had 7! We are still reading books on NZ to figure out what we want to do so we can plan a trip that will take us across the islands. We want a very nature intense trip, trails, glaciers walks, whale watching, I want to find a hang gliding place, etc. I would like to scuba but that would require me to get certified and I don't really have the time before we go. From what I heard its really cold water anyways. Plus I would be going by myself because my wife will not scuba.

is kiwistays a website or what exactly is that?