Smartphones in the Third World

Well Colorado. I’m going to be there for a few weeks and would like to use my smartphone while I’m there as I find the thing super useful when I’m in a town that I know well and pretty much indispensable when I’m lost. I spoke to my provider here in Germany (Vodafone) and asked if there was a roaming package I could buy for the US so I wouldn’t get absolutely murdered by data roaming charges but they only offer those for European countries. Their advice was to buy a SIM in the US.

So hivemind, where should I look? The phone is a Motorola Milestone 2 (Droid 2 in the US I think) and I don’t really care about voice - for the very small number of calls I make, I’m prepared to eat the per minute roaming fee, it’s really all about data usage.

I asked the exact same question for a friend and he just returned happy after 5 weeks in the US. Here’s the thread:

I think he went with AT&T because he has an iPhone4.

Thanks for that. In case other Qt3ers find themselves in a similar situation, I can report that the AT&T option did indeed work like a charm. I went into one of their stores, got a free SIM which I loaded $50 of credit onto and then converted $25 of that into a 500Mb data allowance.

The only problem I’m having is that although internet connectivity is just fine, I can’t log into my Google account but I think that’s a Google auth problem rather than an AT&T netowrk issue.

Are there any similar options for Canada? I have a spare, unlocked GSM phone I’d love to use up there, on the odd occasion I’m in Montreal.