What phone to use in China?

[StuartV]

It looks like I'm going to Beijing, China for a week in February. My Thunderbolt won't work over there so I'm thinking about buying a used phone via CL or eBay to take with me. I'll buy a SIM over there to put in it so I can have a local number while I'm there and data access for keeping up with email (and being able to run Google Maps!).

But, I'm not sure what phones from here would work over there.

Will any T-Mobile or AT&T phone from here work over there? And still get 3G data speeds?

Is there a better plan I should use than this for having a smartphone over there?

Thanks for any help!

 

[anon(21022)]

3g is still new in China afaik. Any quad band GSM phone should be fine.

Not sure how easy it would be to get a sim card, let alone one that has data access. When I was there, a friend had obtained a prepaid sim for me... didn't take the time to figure out the apns, I was busier enjoying the sights (along with choking from the smog and getting pickpocketed, but don't let that deter you LOL)

 

[Moscow Desire]

They rent phones at the airports, at least they used to. I would also guess, you can get a cloned device like Fly, much cheaper there, than perhaps buying a device in the states. After all, it'll be unlocked.

Also, do not allow them to...."program" your device. You may find yourself with an unusable device when you get back to the states.

 

[anon(21022)]

Or make us all jealous and get the Xiaomi M1 phone that everyone was drooling over a few months ago, in the forgotten past, before the Droid RAZR and Galaxy Nexus and all the recent hyped phones

 

[StuartV]

They rent phones at the airports, at least they used to.

Do they rent smartphones?

 

[StuartV]

Or make us all jealous and get the Xiaomi M1 phone that everyone was drooling over a few months ago, in the forgotten past, before the Droid RAZR and Galaxy Nexus and all the recent hyped phones

That phone looks cool, but it won't work on Verizon, so I would have no use for it here.

Plus, I'm a bit skeptical that getting updates ROMs for it - in English - will be easy. I.e. how soon do you think ICS would be available for it? I doubt many devs on XDA (or the other usual suspects) will be working on an ICS port for a phone that nobody has outside of China....

 

[StuartV]

Any my question remains.

Will any T-Mobile or AT&T smartphone work (for voice and 3G data) in Beijing? Only certain ones? Only ones from one of those two carriers but not the other?