Using my iPhone internationally
No, I didn’t unlock my iPhone. Rather I’ve locked it down with a few key settings that allow me to continue my multitouch love affair without paying AT&T through the nose.
The first thing I did upon departing for France was confirm the international data roaming option was switched to off (I think this setting was patched in by Apple after people starting getting upset by four-figure phone bills). I also reset my usage stats so I can easily confirm I’ve downloaded and uploaded only 0 bytes.
Now that I’ve disallowed any unintentional access to the data network I’m wholly reliant on WiFi. So I know when I may be able to connect, the last thing I did was switch on the option to have a notification pop up when a WiFi network is available.
I don’t get many phone calls, so this approach works fine for me. At nighttime I typically turn my phone off or put it in airplane mode, so I don’t get charged for any time spent ringing. If my phone were ringing off the hook during the day I might have to find a solution that would prevent that, but for now this is fine.
