I flew to London yesterday to attend the Le Web Conference this week.
London in June is wonderful, and the Olympic crowds are still weeks away. The only downer is the mugging I knew I’d take when trying to use my iPhone here. I’ve been brought to my knees with bills from trips to Canada and Mexico on this phone. It’s not pretty.
$1.29 per minute. $.50 per text. And, seriously, $19 per mb of data. That’s what Sprint charges for iPhone usage in the UK.
I asked them if they’d just unlock the phone, per the rumors. The answer was yes. No problem. They weren’t going to offer it, but once I asked they did it right away.
This required me to back up the phone on iTunes and then restore it. But after that I slipped in a £15 micro sim from these guys (thanks, Le Web). It gives me 300 minutes, 3,000 texts and “all you can eat data” for “up to 30 days.” And the phone seems to be working just fine.
More than just fine, actually. Speedtest shows a 7.42 Mbps download speed from my hotel room. I’d kill for something like that in the U.S.
A few clicks over at Google Voice to set up the new number let’s me have all my normal calls from the U.S. forwarded here as well. If I want to make outbound calls from this phone using the Google Voice number I need to initiate it through the Google Voice app or website.
If you’re wondering why I went with Sprint in the first place, it’s because it’s the only service that lets me use Google Voice natively with the phone.
ps – I’ve also set up my hotspot and am using this for my laptop. totally awesome.
Uncrunched 