Switching to 5S today from Android and traveling internationally next week.

Hello everyone, long time Android user here. Recently I converted my entire home over to Apple. I bought two new retina macbooks for me and my wife and a iMac for the office. I swapped my new Nexus 7 for an iPad Air and now the final piece of the puzzle is getting rid of both of our old Android phones in exchange for two new 5s.

We are currently on Verizon and I will be staying with them, my question is that we are traveling at the end of next week to London for 5 days and then continuing on to Dubai for another 5 days before returing back to Arizona. I've traveled overseas once before with my current Droid Razr MAXX and when I did, I just popped in a local SIM card and used my phone. This worked ok but I had to trim the SIM card down because my phone uses some Micro SIM or something. Also my data would not work at all when I was there.

I'm hoping that the 5s will work a little better when we travel next week. Will I be able to just pick up a SIM card in London and Dubai and pop it in and go? Or will I need to trim the card again like I did last time and will data work? I want to be able to pull up google maps and stuff while I'm there so that I don't get lost walking around.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Thanks for the tips everyone. So if I'm understanding correctly the 5s takes a Nano Sim card? Looks like my current Droid takes a Micro Sim Card. That sucks because I was hopeing to just swap SIM cards and keep my same number today.

T5BRICK said:

Your number shouldn't change if you swap SIM cards. You're talking about Verizon, right?

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I know it won't change if I swap them, but the 5s uses a Nano and my Droid uses a Micro SIM, so I won't be able to just swap them like I wanted to.

T5BRICK said:

If it works anything like AT&T, when you activate your new phone, it is activated with the included SIM which disables your old SIM.

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Yes but I added a line to my Verizon account so it's going to come with a new number. I had planned on just swapping the Sim and giving the new number to my old phone, and keeping my old number for the new phone. I didn't realize they took two different size SIM cards though. Hopefully they can help me out when I pick it up at the store today.

T5BRICK said:

Ah, yeah, they should be able to. At the very worst, you could pick up a SIM adapter to throw the nano SIM into the Droid, and cut down the micro SIM and throw it into the 5s.

Are SIM cards even required in Verizon phones? My wifes old iPhone 4s works fine without one installed.

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They are required to use LTE, since the 4s doesn't have LTE it didn't need one.