phone to use in europe

[MJA]

Hello,,,
my wife is going to Austria for a week.should I buy a unlocked cheap phone and a SIM card from here or phone from here and a SIM card from there. we both have CDMA phones so she can't take it with her.

by the way.she is going to take her laptop /touchpad/kindle.lol so we are going to use skype from the hotel, but it's nice to have a phone in case of emergency

[dLee]

Have her buy a prepaid phone (w/ sim) when she gets there. I think it's the cheapest way to go, but it won't be cheap.

Verizon has a loaner program for short trips. Maybe your carrier does as well.

I've got an international Blackberry and it's cheaper and easier for me buy some data and international roaming (which, in general, lowers the per minute cost by .50). You can tell Verizon when you want to turn these features on and off - in advance.

The loaner program is good because your phone number stays the same. The bad news is that you pay for outgoing and incoming calls in Europe.

[MJA]

we have sprint.I was thinking about a cheapo used one from ebay for less than $50 and a SIM card from there.

[dLee]

That could work.

I read a lot of horror stories about "too cheap to be true" sim cards with authorization and connection issues. I would be more comfortable mid market.

Buying it there will minimize some of the problems.

Personally, I haven't had good luck with used electronics on ebay.