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Best budget (android) phone for NFC and international travel.

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  • 08-03-2024 6:22am
    #1
    SeanW
    Registered Users Posts: 8,744 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,

    I'm looking for advice for a new phone, preferably Android and preferably not a Chinese make, that would do NFC (which my current phone doesn't) and would work on different continents.

    My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy A04, I bought it in an independent mobile phone shop and I think it was a grey market import originally intended for Kazakhstan or someplace such, as it had applied labels on the box in Cyrillic. While it works fine in Europe, I was in the US last year and the 2G didn't work at all and 4G worked outdoors near a major city (that included the ability to make calls with Voice over LTE) but not further out.

    I did some research on this and looks like 2G uses two frequencies and the EU and US use different ones, also there are different bands for 4G that different countries use, with 5G being even more complicated. I don't care about 5G so for me that part is a non-issue, but I would like to get NFC as I'd like to try paying with your phone/Google Pay like I've seen some do.

    If anyone has experience travelling between Europe and North America, can you give advice on how to make sure you get a phone that works well on both continents?



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    #2
    DopeTech
    Registered Users Posts: 6,754 ✭✭✭DopeTech


    99% of phones these days will work on all the correct bands used by networks across the world, your issue though would be the network you are on and whether they have good roaming agreements with the networks. Particularly in the US they are ahead of us at switching off 3G and your network may not have got a 4g volte roaming agreement. I know this was causing issues for 3 so probably the same for the other networks too. Most likely sorted by now though. What you may be better doing is getting a dual sim phone and buying a local sim or buying a phone that supports esim and then buy a data plan on esim for wherever you are.


    GoMoWorld, airarlo or Dent are all worth looking at for data roaming esim.

    a 2nd hand Google pixel would have esim support and can be picked up cheap enough on adverts.ie etc



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    #3
    CiboC
    Registered Users Posts: 509 ✭✭✭CiboC


    Look for a re-conditioned Pixel, I got one for my son recently from an online seller of refurbished phones and it was perfect (I did pick the highest 'condition' rating). I put in the old box I still had from my Pixel 6a and he thought it was a new phone.

    If you get one that supports e-sims you can use services like gomoworld for your roaming outside of the EU.



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