So what are world phones, I've only seen them in the VZW stores here in the US. What are they how they different? What can they do?
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So what are world phones, I've only seen them in the VZW stores here in the US. What are they how they different? What can they do?
The world edition phones your seeing are cdma devices that can roam on gsm networks overseas.
At a minimum, they must support the following frequencies of GSM:
GSM�: 1900/1800/900/850/MHz
North America: 850 MHz GSM/GPRS networks
North America: 1900MHz GSM�/GPRS networks
Europe/Asia Pacific: 1800MHz GSM/GPRS networks
Europe/Asia Pacific: 900MHz GSM/GPRS networks
So a run of the mill North American GSM phone that is not a world phone would only support 850/1900MHZ. The Vzw world phones add cdma frequency support in addition to the 4 GSM bands.
Most countries use the GSM (Global System for Mobilse) standard for their cell or mobile phones.
The US was slow to adopt a common standard and until a few years ago there were divers systems across US geographies and carriers. So a phone bought in one city often would not work in another. It was a mess. The US did not want to be a late adopter of GSM which was now seen as being a bit out of date.
Slowly the market forced standards and GSM spread across the States but by now, CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) had appeared and many think that it is a superior system. Certainly it is newer.
Several carrier adopted CDMA and thus users having such phones could not use them outside the US coveage area.
RIM made a special phone model that would support both CDMA and GSM. They called it the World Edition or WE and it allowed users to run with CDMA in the US on their home carier and when they went globe trotting, they could use GSM.
Simple.
meaning if i go to say china n get a sim card there it'd work on the phone n i can make calls?
if so then would it work if i did the same thing with like a tmobile or att sim card?
You would need to get an unlock code for you to be able to use it on a US GSM carrier. Ditto if you want to use a non-Verizon SIM in another country.
oooooo
so if i wanted the storm to work on tmobile n in overseas, i would have to unlock it rite?
That's right.
ok thanks
this is what happens when theres a billion versions of something makes me confused like windows products :D
If you can wait till the 9630 comes out on Verizon, I predict a lot of Storm owners will be selling their Storms to recoup some of the money they had to pay buying the 9630 at full retail price. The price on unlocked Storms should also come down after the release of the 9630.
lol nah, only change phones when my contract ends lol
i'll see if anymore phones come out then