I have been out of the tech game for quite a while now (my wife and I use 6S+ phones) and am finally looking to buy new phones as ours are finally dying. We live in northern Georgia and use T-Mobile currently, but my wife travels to Korea occasionally and stays for 2-3 months while there, so I am looking for what will work well for her when there as well as here. Does anybody here have experience with using a phone in S Korea? What iPhone supports the frequency bands used there? I have been looking at the iPhone 13 (not Pro) and understand it will have to be unlocked (either buying unlocked or having it unlocked after the fact). Do you know of any good deals? I realize that our phones are so old they normally will not be worth much in trade, but sometimes there are exceptions. My wife will probablyu be traveling sometime early next year, but now would be good before our phones completely die. Hers is only 16GB and continually out of space because Other is so high, and I haven't found a way to reduce it. I previously would back it up and restore from the backup but now there is not even enough space to do that. I am afraid to completely wipe it and restore, which would probably work but might also lose all of here KakaoTalk history and address book (not an option). Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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Other Best iPhone for traveling to South Korea?
- Thread starter danny_w
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All new iPhones have the same frequency bands. Gone are the days when they varied between carriers.
As long as your phone is carrier unlocked, you’ll be able to roam on any S. Korean network without a problem.
I traveled throughout Asia for the last several years and my iPhones 11 and 12 worked flawlessly everywhere, including S. Korea.
As long as your phone is carrier unlocked, you’ll be able to roam on any S. Korean network without a problem.
I traveled throughout Asia for the last several years and my iPhones 11 and 12 worked flawlessly everywhere, including S. Korea.
Great, that’s wonderful news! I thought when I looked at the specs that they all looked the same and was confused because they used to be so different. So what is the difference between the various models?
The only diference realative to tower signal was that on the XS,XR,11 Days American models didn't support the channel 28 which limited the 4G connectivity in my country (Brazil), so You had to buy one made to be sold here or a European one, the ones who supported this channel, since the american one would also not have coverage here since their model number was diferrent from the ones sold there and europe.
On the 12 and 13 the only diference in tower signal is that only the american models suports mmWave 5G, but since 5G is still kinda new... IDK how it will impact in short term, since I don't even have sub6ghz 5g in my country what else mmWave, it could impact you more if you have acess to mmWave where you live.
On hardware, all models on the market nowadays are perfectly functional and usable, you won't be using a slow unresponsive phone just because they're cheapper, even a XR, which is still a really fast device, newer models are only faster, with better cameras and screens, but you barelly notice the increment in performance on day to day taks unless you do really intensive gamming, we are at a point where the limitation is in IOS itself and not more on the hardware, theres nothing you can do on a 13 that you cannot do on a XS/XR.
Here is the full list.. I think United States model has the most bands (I didn't count only just glanced) but regardless if you buy a fully unlocked iPhone 13 it will work fine in S Korea.
iPhone - Supported 5G and LTE networks
See the countries and regions that have certified 5G and LTE networks on iPhone including the U.S., Canada, Japan, Germany, China mainland, and more.
www.apple.com
If you're on postpaid T-Mobile I'm pretty sure your plan allows for free 2G (maybe 3g now?) data roaming and SMS while in SK. I got by fine with that the last two times I went - used KKT for most of my communication locally. T-mobile should also still allow for paid upgrades to data/calling etc. So you may not need to buy an unlocked 13 in preparation for this trip.
Not unless you buy a current Samsung flagship. Those punks still disable bands depending on region. 😂
I think it has a lot to do with how for some reason Sansung still uses Exynos on some countries and Qualcomm in others, Diferent SoCs different Specs, Still don't understand why they work in this model instead of unifying everything.
Partially true. But the Korean ones use Snapdragon and have a few bands disabled.
Basically they mess around with their phones to make them specific for regions plus their warranty is useless in other country other than place of purchase. 👍🏼