Thanks for the basic bits, some of which I had fair to middling understanding of.
What's "airplane mode" that seems to pop up in discussions as a protective measure?
"Airplane mode" is a single switch that disables all the radios in the phone. You're not supposed to have radio transmitters on a plane when it's landing or taking off. With a regular cell phone, you just turn off the phone, but a smartphone is also a computer, and people use it as a computer (for example, I have a Kindle application on my phone and I read books while I'm flying).
Airplane mode disables all the radios but leaves the rest of the phone operating, so you can still have it switched on when you're on a plane. Airplane mode also saves battery life, since the radios are among the most power-hungry components in the phone.
How does one prevent excessive charges when globetrotting?
When Eve and I were on our book tour in Europe, we got a SIM card for the trip.
A SIM card is a tiny, fingernail-sized card that slips into a cell phone and identifies the cell phone to the telephone company. It contains a serial number (called an "IMSI," or "international mobile subscriber identity"). This serial number is how the telephone company identifies a phone.
The serial numbers are assigned to different phone companies. So when you change the SIM card, you basically change who the phone "belongs" to. If I take the Verizon card out of my phone and replace it with a Wind Mobile card, which I do when I'm in Canada, as far as the universe is concerned my phone is no longer a Verizon phone, it's a Wind Mobile phone.
You pay for SIM cards. There are many voice/data packages aimed at global travelers. You buy the SIM card, usually for $10 to $20, and then when you use that SIM card you pay for the minutes of talk and the data you use. In Europe, we paid something like 2 cents a minute for calls and $20 per gigabyte of wireless data, using a SIM card we bought for $20.
The only disadvantage of doing this is when you change SIM cards, your phone number changes, too. I have two phone numbers, one attached to my US SIM card and one attached to my Canadian SIM card.
Why do providers not provide a single package price for all use? I suspect the answer is obvious — namely whatever the traffic will bear.
That's a big part of it. US residents pay far, far more for cell phone service than anyone else in the world except Brazilians and Bulgarians.
But another part of it is all the various complex agreements for roaming. For instance, say I'm on T-Mobile and I go camping in rural Oregon, something I do often. T-Mobile has no radio towers in rural Oregon, they're all AT&T. If I'm talking to someone as I leave town, my phone switches from T-Mobile to AT&T, which means the physical telephone connection has to stop going over T-Mobile's phone lines and switch to AT&T's, all without dropping the call. That means T-Mobile has to have access to AT&T's phone network, and vice versa.
There are thousands of very complex contracts and agreements between T-Mobile and AT&T and Verizon and all the other phone networks, and they all charge each other money for accessing those networks. This is an example of a situation where having a lot of competing companies actually makes service less efficient and more expensive, rather than the other way around. (Shh! Don't tell the Libertarians!)
European countries are small compared to the US, and have fewer companies, meaning there's less redundancy and fewer separate but overlapping phone networks, and therefore lower cost.
Costing of services is clearly my biggest concern, and even the providers cannot explain it in simple and justifiable terms. And there seems to be no way to protect oneself from exorbitant costs no matter what one does.
I observe everyone with smartphones doing things (which must involve the Internet and concomitantly incur major costs) such as videophoning,'couponing', diddling around in time-wasting fashion, etc. I find it hard to comprehend what the 'charm' in any of this might be. And I find it aggravating that they have to invade my personal space to do it.
You don't get charged if you're using a WiFi connection instead of the phone company's Internet connection. So for example, if I'm on my phone at home, or at a restaurant with WiFi, or at a coffee shop, I'm using WiFi and not the phone company Internet, so I'm not paying for it. In most cities WiFi hotspots are everywhere. As I'm walking in downtown Vancouver looking at my phone, my phone might hop onto McDonald's WiFi as I walk past, then switch to a Starbucks WiFi hotspot, then switch to my phone company's Internet access, then switch to another Starbucks WiFi hotspot.
You can get cheap smartphone plans. I use a cheap plan when I'm in the US. It gives me a gigabyte of data and a hundred hours of talk time for $30 a month. If I go over that, it sends me a text message and I can choose not to use any more data, thus avoiding extra charges.
But my phone is paid for; I've had it for several years. Most people who buy a smart phone don't want to pay $600 for the phone up front, so they get a plan from the phone company that spreads payments over 2 years, meaning they're only paying $25 a month for that $600 phone. The phone companies are willing to offer what amounts to an interest-free 2-year loan for a $600 phone because the catch is you have to sign up for their premium plans instead of their low-cost plans. Once the phone is paid for, or if you buy the phone up front, or if you get a second-hand phone from someone who has just upgraded, you can get a low-cost plan.
If you've never used a smartphone before, it can be hard to understand how life-changing it is. You have a full-fledged computer with an always-on Internet connection everywhere you go. I use mine for directions (I have a terrible sense of direction, but I can go anywhere in the world except Antarctica and I will always have a detailed map with GPS coordinates showing me where I am and planning routes to any address by car, public transit, or walking).
I use mine for reading books, for running my business (email clients and Web browsers are built into every smart phone), for staying in touch with family, for word processing, for note-taking (there have literally been times I've been out hiking in the middle of the woods and gotten an idea for something I want to write about in one of my books, and I can take notes in the phone), even for a flashlight (smartphones have a flashlight built in).
A smart phone replaces a compass, a GPS navigator, a book reader, notebooks and paper, a flashlight, a television, a computer, an alarm clock, an egg timer, a camera (funny how UFO and Loch Ness Monster sightings went way down after half the world started carrying high-resolution cameras everywhere!), a video camcorder (a low-end iPhone is superior to the best VHS camera ever made), a music player, a day planner, a calendar, a contact book, and a newspaper.
