Best Phone to Travel International – Go & Buy It

Is there a best phone to travel international? When we gave this idea some thought we started out trying to list what characteristics this phone had to have. The task was challenging because you do want to bring a phone that’s going to allow you to enjoy some of the newest technological advancements that are on the market today. At the same time it had to be a phone that essentially featured backward compatibility. What we mean by that is, the phone has to have the ability to run on 3G or 4G internet connections. If you need an eSIM and a 5G network to get the phone to work you’re not going to be able to get a lot out of that particular device in certain parts of the world. 

Another thing that we realized is that this couldn’t be a lifetime achievement award. We’re going to try and crown the best phone to travel international in early 2022. In the subsequent years we’ll try to update the winner. Compatibility issues are going to start to become a problem with certain devices as the years go by. So what we decided that we wanted to do is walk you through our criteria then name the winner. That way even if you don’t agree with the winner you’re going to be able to use our criteria to pick a phone that may be in a better price range, or just look cuter than the phone that we ended up picking. Here’s the list of things that we took into account. 

1. What operating system it should run on
2. eSIM or Regular SIM Port?
3. Does The Particular Brand Matter? 
4. Something In A Decent Price Range
5. Compatible With 4G and 5G Networks

What operating system it should run on

We had a long discussion about this, and IOS users really pulled hard for their side. Arguing that the Apple operating system allowed folks to access more apps than the App Store. This is a trend though that doesn’t seem to be holding up as true as it maybe once was. Apps are being launched in both stores these days. The reason why we would give the edge to Android is because if you travel to countries that have lower tier web coverage you are going to find more Android apps available. You could make the argument that you have no intention of running local apps. You may need to think if you are going to get a local SIM card.

Another thing that we feel is relevant is the fact that Apple itself tends to make their own devices obsolete quicker. So that means that if you buy an Android phone from the current generation of phones you may be able to continue updating the software for a longer period. That’s another factor that certainly seems to fall in the favor of Android. From here we can talk about the prices of these phones which are considerably cheaper. So that opens the door for you to maybe think about really buying a phone that you use exclusive for travel. You’d have to take the brand into consideration as well. That’s something that we are going to here in a bit.    

What Should The Best Phone To Travel International Feature? -eSIM or Regular SIM Port?

Ideally you’ll have a dual SIM phone that allows you to read both types of SIM cards. Even a couple of months back we may have talked about the need to have a regular SIM port as one of the most important features. However, with the rise of eSIM technology and marketplaces like Airalo, things have certainly shifted. As we’d predicted for about a year and change, eSIM technology is changing the way that we access international coverage. If you are traveling to developed countries then you’ll be able to buy an eSIM from an app and get local coverage. If you just have the regular SIM card port you’ll be missing out on a truly great opportunity. 

At the same time, we can’t say that a regular SIM port isn’t necessary. There are still a lot of countries across the globe where eSIM technology hasn’t exactly expanded. So you can take a phone that has eSIM capabilities, but the reality is that none of the carriers in that country offer the ability to get an eSIM. Especially not for prepaid plan users. That seems to be taking quite longer than we had expected. Even in the United States and other developed countries the large wireless services providers are in no hurry to provide prepaid eSIM options. That’s why a regular SIM port is still a feature that the best phone to travel international has to have. 

Does The Particular Brand Matter? 

It certainly might, and here are a couple of reasons why. If you are going to be crossing the pond or going to a country that runs on a different type of electrical current this is going to be a problem. Yes, you could get a converter and charge your phone with your regular charger. We’ve talked about this though in other articles where we covered the topic. Some of the cheap voltage converters that are out there may end up harming both your phone and your charger. Sadly, these cheap ones are the ones that most people are carrying around. They literally sell these on the airplane ride over. What does this all have to do with your phone brand? 

Well, from our perspective the Best phone to travel international should feature a charger that is widely compatible. You are not going to have a hard time trying to find a charger for your phone. Also, if you do it’s not going to be overly expensive. With that in mind, iPhones and some of the newer Samsung models may have trouble getting this title from us. Particularly because if you stay on the converter or even buy a cheap makeshift charger you could be harming the phone! You are not going to want to take that risk are you? We haven’t picked the winning brand at this point, but we certainly feel that it matters.   

Something In A Decent Price Range

We have kind of been hinting at this for a while now on this article. If we are talking about not buying expensive chargers you better believe that the phone itself has to be affordable. There are a couple of things here though that may throw us into a higher price range than maybe you would have expected. This is because we want the phone to be compatible for at least a couple more years. What we mean by that is that we want it to keep getting updates from apps and things like that. Therefore, it has to be a rather recent phone. We can’t go with the old Nokia as the top option for this years’ list or any year for that matter.  

In putting together the check list of the different features that we would like our phone to have we have pretty much been able to pinpoint a couple of options by this point. The process hasn’t been as difficult as we would have expected. Since we’ve been able to search different online stores, we’ve found a couple of gems along the way. Certainly, one of the main reasons why we even thought about creating this article in the first place was to showcase some of these hidden gems. That you maybe never thought about because you were loyal to a particular phone manufacturer. 

Compatible With 4G and 5G Networks

A lot of the older phones that we were going to throw out anyway because you can’t upgrade apps on them are also going to fall by the wayside with this requirement. The phone needs to be compatible with this current generation of networks. What if you travel to the parts of Asia where they are on 6G? Well a lot of these newer phones may still be compatible with the lower tier network that they have available. If not then we still have to consider that the phone we ultimately chose has to get you the option of coverage in most of the world. Therefore, getting a phone that’s too new can also get you off budget.  

In most of the countries across the globe 4G and 5G networks are still what you want to access. From the looks of things that’s not going to change overnight. There are a ton of countries that are having quite a bit of trouble establishing a reliable 5G network. So as you can imagine things beyond that are not going to be coming to the USA, India, and many parts of Europe for at least a couple more years. In some cases it’s way more than a couple. As we just mentioned they are not even on full 5G. So a phone that can access a 4G or 5G network is what you are looking for today.     

Best Phone to Travel International – Option 1

Moto G Stylus 5G 

Why are we picking a Motorola phone? Well, there are three main reasons why we chose this phone. Number one is the price tag on this phone. At 252 dollars this is a phone that most people are going to be able to go out and buy without needing a line of credit. It also features a type-C USB charger. We really liked this because one of our main concerns when traveling is having to go out and buy gadgets, particularly chargers, and have to drop a ton of cash on them. That’s not ideal by any means. Overall the phone works well there’s truly nothing too fancy. 

The two most important features that we liked was the fact that it was 5G compatible, and it was released in the middle of 2021. At the time of writing for this article this is going to be a phone that you are going to be able to update apps for the better part of maybe 2 or 3 years. When you go abroad you are potentially going to be able to access the fastest network that the country that you travel to has to offer. Yes, some of the other features on the phone are rather basic. We are not going to shy away from that. However, we feel that it’s a well rounded low budget option.    

Best Phone To Travel International Option 2

ONEPLUS – Nord N200 5G

If you expected to see Xaomi phones or another brand, there’s one main reason why they are not on this list. That is the fact that they are not 5G compatible locally. At least many of them. The ONEPLUS Nord N200 5G is obviously 5G compatible locally. You can downgrade to slower connections if you need to. The one thing though that put it over the edge in our book was the fact that it features dual SIM capabilities. We could say that at this point in time if you want to travel the phone that you chose has to be able to at least hold two SIM cards. 

As was the case with the Motorola phone that we talked about, this device has a very recent release date. Going back to the summer of 2021. Which means that you can expect updates to continue rolling out for this phone for some time. In fact, even though you can get it at a low price today there’s a good chance that you can pick up both of these phones at an even lower price if you’re planning to travel in the summer of 2022 and beyond. As newer versions of these phones are going to be hitting in the market in the coming months or years. 

Best Phone to Travel International – Conclusion

There are certainly other options on the table. Also, you can use your regular phone in some cases as your travel phone. These options that we are throwing out there, in our mind happen to be perfect burner phone options. So if you don’t want to take your original device or you don’t want to run the risk of adding a local SIM card or connecting your regular phone to an open Wifi network these are the two phones that you’re going to want to target. They may not be the least expensive options on the market. Remember though, that some of the other less expensive options don’t feature some of the elements that are very important to have in a phone that you’re traveling with.