7 phone travels hacks to save your life (or your sanity)
A guide to smart nomading with a smartphone.
Have you ever forgotten to turn off roaming mode on your phone when traveling, and ended up paying 200 dollars for a quick trip on Facebook? Well, do not worry young nomad, we have all been there at one point, and what matters now is to learn your ways around this and become phone-smart with your smartphone! Take these advice from a world-class clumsy traveler and get into your sleeping bag with peace of mind.
Buy a waterproof, shock-resistant phone
If you’re all about the adventurous life, the last thing you want is to start worrying about the scratches and the water drops on your phone. When it comes to your biggest survival tool, you want to be sorted. So, even if you’re tight on your budget and can’t get the latest incredible camera (traveling is not about taking pictures anyways!), buy a waterproof phone and spend that extra 30 dollars on a good protection case. The next time your drops drops into the pool, you’ll be thanking yourself.
Get a dual-sim
Bye bye, iPhone-curated photos! If you’re adopting the nomadic lifestyle, the dual-sim card will be your friend (yep, that’s why the series’ lead character has a Samsung). Most phones (ecept for Apple product) have a dual sim version available. If you are in the US, you won’t be able to buy one in the country (you read that right, for some reason - hello network operators mafia - it cannot be sold within the US), however it is perfectly legal to go on Amazon and get a phone shipped from abroad, even if you’re in the US. As a matter of fact, it’s usually also cheaper.
Once you’ve ordered your dual sim phone, you’ll be able to have two of your lives in one device only: you’ll be reachable to all your dear ones back home (and let’s not forget that you need to receive an SMS for every single website you now register to, so that comes in handy) AND you’ll also have a local sim to enjoy decent call, SMS and data rates. Did I hear someone shout “LIFE SAVER”? And guess what…to make the very most of it, all you need is the following:
The United Kingdom is home to some great international data plans.
3. Purchase an international data plan
When hopping from one country to the next, the data struggle is real! We are at our most vulnerable in new countries, and this is where our phone is the most difficult to use! If you don’t want to spend absurd amounts of money when traveling – we’re talking about 6€ per call minute and 18 € per MB - the first thing you should do is: turn your phone into Data Roaming OFF mode by default. This way, at least, you’ll be safe. You can then also purchase a local SIM card in whichever country you are.
However, if you’re planning on traveling across different countries, there are a few hacks that will change your life! Some network operators offer very valuable data plans internationally, so why not making the most of it? Here is a a list of examples (please let us know if you know some more):
Post-paid plans: In Europe, a bunch of networks offer really good deals. In the European Union in particular, many operators offer cross-border data. In France, Free offers 25Go + unlimited local calls and texts, in 5O countries. In the UK, Vodafone offers 50Go for 30 GBP a month valid across Europe.
Pre-paid plans: If you don’t want to be locked to a contract and don’t mind changing phone numbers, just purchase a bunch of SIM cards from O2 in the UK: for 8 pounds a month, you get 8GB of data worldwide…valid for two months only…so by the end of it, get the next sim card (they are sold for free!).
Oh and last but not least… don’t get fooled into using those so-called international SIM cards…they usually charge you more than 20$ per MB…a true beginner’s mistake!
4. Install Whatsapp and Skype
If it wasn’t obvious already, you are heavily going to rely on data whilst traveling. a, because getting a local number in every single countru (and remembering it) can become more of a hastle than a tool, and b. because…well because data: Google Maps, Airbnb, Uber etc. are the modern traveler’s best friend! So in order to communicate, you might as well get your phone straight and use your preferred number to set up your Whatsapp and other apps. My top 2 apps really are Whatsapp and Skype: Whatsapp because of its user-friendliness and how it’s the one platform where I communicate with my friends and family all around the world, and Skype because ultimately it has the best audio/video quality and allowed me to make extremelly cheap calls if needed…and it’s happened to me more than once to have data but no phone reception. In this case, buy Skype credits and call a number as if you were using an actual phone… life saver!
5. Don’t lose your SIM cards!
If you do your fair share of traveling, you’ve started collecting a bunch of local SIM cards (yes, I advocate for a main international SIM, however when I often go back to a country, I’m always glad to have this go-to number people can reach me on). Well my advice is: don’t lose them! If you made some nice connections, you’ll always be glad to be reachable on the number you initially gave them. Now the question is: where to store your SIM cards while traveling? My personal hack is: in my phone! Basically I put all my sim cards under my phone case. Is it risky? Maybe. But this has given me the best rate of not-lost-cards so far.
6. Download a VPN
Better be safe than sorry, some countries won’t allow you to use a lot of your apps (Whatsapp, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Maps, etc.). If you don’t want to be stuck in a not-enough-virtual limbo, pre-download two (free) VPN apps so you’re sur to be able to use them if ever need be. Why two, you may ask… that’s because VPN apps have proven (first hand experience!) to be very buggy and sometimes useless. Since your app store might be restricted, you want to make sure you have a properly working VPN rather than spend your entire holidays without Google (yes China, I’m talking about you!).
7. Disconnect!
Now that you’re completely sorted and are ready to take on the world, it may be time to…turn your phone off! After all, we didn’t decide to travel to check our best friend’s dog or our sister’s new cake every 5 minutes. The beauty of traveling and nomadic is to stay curious, open to the world and to new adventures! So while a good phone connection can come in very handy to help us be a flexible traveler, it’s also up to us to make the most of our trip by switching off!
