Looking for the best way to get a S3 working in Los Angeles and in France.

[skyrunner99]

Hello all,

Newbie here, really sorry in advance if I mess up my explanations. I'll try to give as much info as I can to paint the most accurate picture of my situation.
So here's my story:

I currently have an dinosaur, I mean an iphone 3G, with ATT in Los Angeles.
I spend about 3 months in France every year where I just swapped my ATT SIM card with one from my french carrier.
Worked really well for me so far.

Now I want to ditched my iphone and jump aboard the Galaxy S3 express, but I really need to keep the same kind of arrangement for my french stays (same phone with a swapping of SIM cards).
I intend to buy the S3 at full price without any carrier-subsidized service rebates..
I am rarely out of range of my wifi (home or office) so I am not sure of the importance of 4G for me (better have it than not, of course!)

I wanted to switch carrier and go with metro PSC to save some money ( what I have now with ATT is ridiculous: 450 mn and no text for $80-$90/ month, I guess I have unlimited internet but my cellular network data usage in the last 44 months was, don't laugh please, 974 MB...so not really an issue to lose the unlimited thing) but I understand that Metro PSC uses CDMA so no SIM card to swap unfortunately...

Bottom line is that I am really open to suggestions (carrier phone, unlocked phone, what carrier etc,,,) I have been thinking about the whole thing for quite some time now and I am still not happy with the outcome...

Basically... HELP
:-[

Thank you in advance

 

[funkylogik]

for a start, the international just isnt capable of LTE mate, it doesnt have the antenna for it.
wish i could help with the other stuff but i live in scotland and i know US carriers are very different.
buying the phone outright and then getting a cheap prepay sim is defo the way to go (more americans should do it)
since you dont use much data (i use 30gb p/m lol) then LTE wont really be useful to you whereas the international s3 has quad-core so its a bit faster and if unlocked gets updates faster.
you'l just have to find a US sim thats definately compatible with it.
theres americans with the gt-i9300 on this forum so hopefully they can help you better.
good luck whatever you do

global s3, UK. Ask me anything and ill reply even if its just an intelligent (or stupid) guess

 

[walcolm]

If you're buying the GSIII full price, then you can't use it on the metro pc network unless you're buying metro pcs cdma version. If you go that route then SIM swapping can't work

The way to go is get the international version, change your plan with at&t to a cheaper one so you can swap out sims when you get to France

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Android Central Forums