My daughter has an iphone on contract and wants to take it abroad to take photos. My question is, does she just turn off data roaming and put it on airplane mode to prevent her from incurring any charges on her monthly bill? Thanks in advance.

i would recommend it, and get her to double check while she is over there as a family member had switched it off and upon arrival in the other country it had seemed to turn it's self back on.

As a safe bet just switch data off on the device under:

Settings > network > Cellular Data - Switch to off and Data roaming Off

She should be ok then .

Also i would recommend advising her that it may cost more to send messages while roaming and to receive/make calls. The costs soon add up especially now you do not really see how many sent messages you have in chat form.

I don't know if they have fixed the problem yet but I know at one time there was an issue with o2 visual voicemail, running up a data bill, even with roming data turned off.

Yeah safest thing would be to turn off all the bits individually and then enable airplane mode.

I guess the idea is she wants to use it like an iPod touch?

Cant speak for iPhone in particular but everytime I go abroad I always make sure that I call the network and request Data be disabled so I cant even connect. This usually takes a few hours. I then turn it off manually on my phone. As long as I dont answer any calls on holiday I dont pay a penny over my contract except for my calls and texts.

some people recommend flight mode. but it seems a bit extreme to me.

what if you want to contact her?

I would only recommend flight mode to conserve battery and if it was not going to be used as a phone to make/receive calls or send/receive SMS. But as flagpole has said seems a bit pointless to switch this on unless you really need to.

I shall be going with her. So a quick yell will do the trick

Manually editing the access points in settings/general/network/mobile data network should cripple things enough so that data cannot be used. Just add some x's or other extra characters at the end of the access points. The other steps people have suggested such as making sure data and data roaming is turned off are also good ideas. Flight mode is probably overkill and would prevent her from receiving calls or texts though remember chances are she will be charged if she answers a call

Disabling voicemail is also a good idea which on O2 can be done by calling 1760 while still in Uk. Call 1750 to turn it back on when you get back

I'm going to the USA next month as well and plan on using my phone for facebook/twitter as there is free wifi at the hotel so I assume is this ok if I disable the data roaming?? I got stung when I was away last year by sending plenty of texts so I'll just send the occasional one this time

I disabled cellular data whilst in the states recently and isn't incur a single penny data charge so thats probably the best way for you to go.

I would leave the iPhone at home as the temptation to use it fully could mean you end up with a massive bill.

Buy her a £9.99 PAYG phone from Argos and but some credit on it and get a camera for her.

Yes its costing you up front but a brother in law of mine in the same situation as you let his girl go with the camera and the bill for when she was abroad was over £700

I always take my iPhone abroad and turn off data roaming. I usually leave WIFI switched on and pay the hotel's WIFI fee, if it has one.

At the last hotel I went to in Tenerife, I paid a one-off £25 for WIFI. As I spent about 80% of the holiday in the hotel, it was worth it.

the wifi, yes but probably not the holiday.

If the phone is unlocked, and depending on where you are going you could be a pre pay ( pay as you go ) sim card when you arrive at your destination airport ( most airports have phone shops) and get a data package with it.

I've used my iPhone abroad on several occasions. As others have said. In order to avoid unwanted charges:

Switch off Data Roaming in Settings
Switch off Cellular Data in Settings
Dial 901 (if it's O2, or whatever your voicemail number is) BEFORE YOU GO and disable your voicemail altogether, as this works separately to the other data functions and will continue working if you don't turn it off.

That way you can leave the phone and texting functions on. Make sure she tells her friends that she's on holiday though, and not to call her, text only, and even then only sparingly!

Have a good holiday!

Take the Sim card out and make sure!

I just turned off cellular data. Tesco sent me a text outlining all my possible charges as soon as I turned my phone off from the flight. Looked to be a bit cheaper if you were going to a country where the network provider has a presence, I know that my friends on Voda in Barcelona got much cheaper stuff than me, and a free 25mb/day.

Im planning on buying a local sim card when im next out of the UK, and using a Dutch vodaphone pay as you go sim in my phone for data, using a €10 30 day ( almost ) unlimited data package for a while.
As for texts and staying in touch, im planning on taking my old phone as well, and putting my current UK sim in that, and only using it when needed

I thought about that and decided it wasn't worth the aggravation.

Phoning the UK would be classed as an international call, so you're not really saving there.

If you call a friend's mobile in the same country you're in, then I'm not quite sure what happens, but I'm guessing you would call the UK (international), who would divert the call to your location. So even the person's standing next to you, it would be classed as international.

You've got the language barrier making things difficult, international laws to deal with, registration, making sure you use the top-up within a week or two...

I would say T-Mobile are the cheapest for short calls and Vodafone for long calls. Data on all networks is grossly expensive and just not worth it.

No need for flight mode - thats very extreme.

I went to Budapest in February and a whole group of us had iPhones. All we did was ensure Data Roaming was off (which is the default setting on an iPhone anyway) and disabled 3G and Wifi. None of us had extra charges on our phones (apart from texts and calls we had sent/made).

I went to the Alps in the south east of France last month for a week skiing. I had hoped to be able to buy (for my new iPhone 4), a reasonably priced, local "pay as you go" SIM-card with plenty of data download included. Unfortunately, that kind of service does not seem to exist in France (unlike in some other European countries such as Sweden), but as all three places where we stayed had free WiFi, I could meet most of my data download needs there, including making my telephone calls using my iPhone based Skype app. I had pre-purchased calls to regular landlines and mobile phones for £10, but only used up a pound or two while calling my wife at home every day.

For being able to use the iPhone's built in GPS, where Goggle maps are not available due to no Internet access, I purchased for a $ the excellent app "MotionX-GPS on the iPhone", which allowed me (free of charge) to download detailed terrain and street maps in advance, covering ski areas and along roads we planned to travel. Only warning is that the maps could take up a lot of space if one covers a too large area with too high resolution, but that could be easily adjusted after some practicing while downloading. The stored tracks that the application creates while one is moving around, can be emailed to one's own (and others') email addresses via the website of the app (no email account had to be set up in the phone). By clicking a link in the email (on the receiving computer), the tracks could be viewed on Google maps in terrain, regular or satellite mode. Very impressive!

I turned off data roaming both in the iPhone itself, and at my account with my mobile phone provider "3". I had just a few extra charges due to regular short calls with a local network in France, but no data roaming charges.