Deploying Over Seas to Korea and inneed of a good cell phone

Question

           Im in the Army and deploying to Korea for a year. I am in need of a good cell phone to use to call home as well as communicate with my solders in Korea. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Soldier4 wrote:
           Im in the Army and deploying to Korea for a year. I am in need of a good cell phone to use to call home as well as communicate with my solders in Korea. Any ideas?
This one is tough - Unfortunately Korea is one of the few countries that also uses CDMA2000 for some of their networks (same technology as Sprint/Verizon) - CDMA2000 phones tend not to be very portable from carrier to carrier.
However - some carriers in Korea might use a GSM network.
However, so far, most of the info I can find indicates that Korea uses CDMA2000 in a band that doesn't match anything used by Sprint or Verizon in the United States.  It looks like you might need to purchase a phone from a Korean carrier.
The one exception seems to be http://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html - According to this, SK Telecom in Korea has UMTS service in the 2100 MHz band, so the majority of unlocked GSM phones will work.  e.g. an unlocked AT&T or T-Mobile phone may work (exception:  The HTC Inspire 4G lacks UMTS2100, some other AT&T smartphones also might.) if you can obtain an SK Telecom SIM.
Korea is a bit weird in that SK is probably the only carrier I've ever seen to transition from a CDMA2000 EV-DO network to HSPA...  In short, you probably picked the WORST destination country possible to find an international phone for!
*disclaimer* I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee of Best Buy, Geek Squad, nor of any of their affiliate, parent, or subsidiary companies.