Can I use a S5 bought in Panama in the US? Please help!

[brewkeeper]

I recently was the victim of losing my Samsung Galaxy S5 (that I originally bought in the states) in Panama City while down here on an extended traveling adventure. Since I have been down here for a while and plan to stay a while longer, I had unlocked the phone and have been using a local SIM card. First off, is there anyway to recover this old phone? I tried using AndroidLost, but the phone is already off. Any hope?

If losing the phone wasn't bad enough - I may have done something worse by buying another one. I thought I would fix the problem, since I was assured by all sales people here that the phones here would work anywhere since they are unlocked. Made sense at the time - but I have not had access to the internet until now, so I was unable to fact check this. Now I am wondering - is there hope? I have a different SIM card in the phone now, but they switched over my number from the old one.

Also, on a separate note - the keyboard on this phone is much different from the phone I had previously. Why is that? No text-to-speech option, and there are not punctuation keys over any of the letters - very annoying for typing.

Hoping I didn't screw myself twice...
-Brad

 

[gone down south]

Whats the model number of your new phone? That'll let you look up what bands it supports and see what US carriers it'll work on. Verizon and Sprint are probably out, but if it's an unlocked phone it should work on T-Mo and AT&T. Works and "works optimally", of course are two different things and depend on the bands

The keyboard is easy to fix, you can download thousands of variations grub the Play Store, just find one you like and install it.