Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now.
On today's episode let's talk about traveling with your iPhone.
So you can see here I am on a cruise.
When you are on a cruise you are traveling to lots of different countries.
In this case I am in Europe.
So before I left home I made sure that I took some actions that would prevent me from having
a huge phone bill when I got home.
It is important to realize that if you live in the United States your plan only covers
you making phone calls and using data in the United States.
If you go outside of the country you will find you can still use your phone, especially
if you have one that has a GSM chip in it like the AT&T phones.
But you are going to get charged a lot for these services.
You can avoid some of these huge bills by setting some things up before your leave.
For instance I went into myAT&T account online and I set up three different things.
See there are three different types of things that your phone does.
There is voice, text messaging, and there is data.
So I went into these and made sure that I chose an European plan for each of them.
Now when you are trying to figure out which plan you want for each of those it is probably
important that you just choose at least the minimum plan.
You see what happens is that if you don't choose any plan, say you choose no plan for
text messaging, and say you send a text message.
You are going to be charged the maximum for that.
I think I saw prices for a dollar or more.
But if you choose at least the minimum plan then you get a certain amount, say fifty text
messages right off the bat with the price of the plan, but then all the overage charges,
everything over those number of messages will be at a more reasonable rate.
The same for data and voice.
Like thirty minutes of voice at a minimum plan but then every minute over it's going
to be much more reasonable if you have that minimum plan.
It is going to be completely unreasonable if you chose no plan at all.
So you can choose a bigger plan of course if you know you are going to use a lot of
data, you know are going to send a lot of text messages.
Things like that.
It is important to remember that text messages do not include i messages.
i messages are sent over the internet.
They use data they do not use the SMS system of cell phone carriers.
Another option, of course, is to not use anything at all.
But it is very hard to do because if you are going to connect your phone at all to any
cell towers anywhere you travel you are going to be using some data and you could get a
phone call or text message.
Remember you pay for receiving messages as well.
So even getting a spam message is going to cost you a bunch if you have no plan.
But if you do want to travel and not use any of this stuff then you can put your iPhone
into Airplane mode.
That will shut everything off.
It is important that you do that on your flight over because as soon as you land it is going
to connect and you may receive some emails, you might get some text messages that have
been waiting, you are going to use some data just back and forth between different apps.
So it is important to do that first.
Now one thing you can do is you can use airplane mode and then go into your settings and turn
on Wi-Fi.
This will allow you to use your iPhone inside of hotels, apartments you rent, even cruise
ships like this that have Wi-Fi.
You won't be connected to any of the mobile carriers so you won't rack up any charges
there.
It would be like using an iPad or iPod Touch that just has Wi-Fi.
Another thing that you can do is you can limit your data usage.
Go into your Mail settings and make sure you have turned off Push and Fetch for everything.
Not just the main setting but for each individual account and set it to manual.
This way it will only check for email when you actually go to the Mail app.
So you can only go to the Mail app say if you have Wi-Fi and never do that normally.
Then you won't just suddenly get email as you are traveling around and have to pay for
that bandwidth.
You can also go into your settings and turn off messaging completely.
This won't turn off i message.
It will just turn off using the mobile carrier messaging which will save you some money there.
But it is really risky.
I mean you turn all this stuff off.
You don't buy any additional plans and for just a few minutes you accidentally maybe
or just on purpose make a single emergency call turn these things on and you get a bunch
of waiting text messages, you can get a bunch of data back and forth with your apps, and
you can receive a bunch of phone calls or make a phone call and you can easily go over
this stuff.
That's how people end up with these nightmare bills.
So it is almost the kind of thing you have to do if you plan on using your iPhone at
all overseas at least get the minimum plan for each of these three and then have to deal
with at least a somewhat large charge but avoid the possibility of a massive charge
when you get home.
Then you want to watch out too because the plan you buy, say I bought the European plan,
which works for all the countries I visited.
However, the cruise ship has cellular here that is not included in that plan.
So a few times my phone has tried to connect and I have had to turn on airplane mode really
quickly so it doesn't connect to the ships' cellular which would cost, it said, ten dollars
a mg.
So I hope you found these travel tips for your iPhone useful.
It's always best to go onto your web site for your carrier and check to see what they've
got there.
Call them if you have any questions.
Just make sure you have it all setup before you leave.
Then of course remember to shut all this stuff off when you get home so that you don't continue
to get billed for it month after month.
Until next time
this is Gary with MacMost Now.