Telestial Travel Buddy Quad-Band Handset and OneRate Prepaid International SIM with USD 5.00 Credit

I bought this phone to use on a trip through the Copper Canyon area of northern Mexico. The first problem I encountered was properly inserting the SIM card. The instruction booklet just says "Insert one or more SIM cards". There are no instructions on how to do this or illustrations in the manual. The SIM chip comes on a card that you punch out. The chip itself is surrounded by a nano size card which is itself surrounded by a micro size card. I looked at the SIM slot under the battery and decided that it took the nano size card which I punched out. Put it in the phone but could not get the phone to recognize it. Called technical support and learned that it needed to be the micro size card so I reassembled it but had difficulty inserting the card / chip into the phone and after several tries I broke the cardboard micro size surround. Called technical support again and they told me to buy a chip to micro size adapter card ($3.88) which I did. Put it all back together and finally had the phone recognize the SIM. BTW, the gold contacts on the SIM need to be face down, another point not mentioned in the instructions.Next I tried to set up the phone here in the states with one of the GSM providers. The phone recognized both T-Mobil and AT&T systems. I tried first on T-Mobil but continued to get "All circuits busy, please try again later" messages. So, I switched to AT&T and the setup went smoothly.We started out trip in El Paso and the phone worked fine near the border on the U.S. AT&T system. However, as we headed south into Mexico it would not connect on either of the two GSM systems (Telcel or Movistar) available in the rural areas of Chihuahua or Sinaloa states although family members traveling with us were having no problems connecting with their Verizon or AT&T phones.At the end of our trip we flew to La Paz, Mexico and then drove down to Cabo. The phone worked in La Paz and Cabo on the Lusacell system but not on the drive between the two cities.Lastly, the voice quality with this phone is only fair. However, text messages were sent and received OK.

Good things arrive in small packages. But this small surprised me; I thought it might be missing the full kit as directly sold by Telestial. Yes, everything was all there; the unlocked phone, sim card, battery, recharger, and electrical adapter for Europe including written documentation pamphlets and a wallet sized quick reference card. This no-frills cell phone clearly is designed for the frugal traveler. Frugal because the vacation is not about telephoning on it every day to talk with the people back home; use the telephone at your lodging. The phone's features and services provided deliver the essentials. It's not about taking photographs with your cell phone. Your brought your own and better digital camera for that. Yet it includes a travel journal that is automatically updated and that you can manually update on the web with your camera pictures. It's not about game playing and web-surfing but it does have texting too. It's about a phone to place and receive a call when its necessary, an address book, and has voicemail. These three are the most important to me; it has more and sensible features as well. Such as fast dialing to essentials like local emergency services for the country that one is in, customer support, and either automatic or fast dial recharge of call minutes. But that's not all, as goes the saying.The customer support by telephone is very good. The people who answer your call are very knowledgeable and courteous; they are excellent. You quickly get answers and the right ones. Yet one needs to be prepared for heavy call volumes sometimes putting one on hold. Were it not for that I would rate it overall excellent. But it is not trying on one' patience as within a few minutes wait one gets through to a real person without playing voice menu maze. And here they must be heralded for sensibly minimizing that nonsense. One finds it much easier to wait when it takes at most two levels to get to someone.OK, what are the downsides? Fine print. No, not the legal stipulations. It's that all the documentation provided is printed too small for these old eyes to read without strain. Go to the web-site or call customer support when one's eyes give out. And don't throw away anything that you get in that small box including what looks like advertising because it is useful sooner or later. There is one other thing that could be better documented. It's the free thirty minutes one can use to receive calls without being charged or charging the cost to the caller. It took a telephone call to customer support to get it properly explained. But these are hardly onerous inconveniences that detract from the overall value and convenience.I liken this cell phone and service to another low-cost provider in the U.S. (name intentionally withheld) that also provides excellent value in the phone but the main difference is that Telestial's telephone customer support is superior. For the traveler who wants to vacation hassle-free, then this is the overall best value phone and service to have.

The phone is very compact and light.I couldn't test it in US before giving it to my child for the trip to UK. There is no problem with texting back and forth from UK to US. I assume that the voice call would work as well since texting proved that it can connect to the cellular network, but voice wasn't tested. What I like is the travel journal and the location function where from a website, you click the link and it would update the location of the phone and presumably that's where the person carrying the phone is (then found out that this costs 3 cents each time you use the location function, but that's reasonable. Just wish I knew about it before clicking several times.) You can send a text from a website for just 15 cents and the text from this phone to my cell phone seems to be recognized as a domestic text and therefore no extra charge to receive.(though it cost 79 cents to send).It costs almost $1 per min so you could use up your money very quickly, but it is easy to see the balance and recharge the minutes from a website.All in all, this is an inexpensive phone to have handy for emergency use. Nowadays, with wi-fi being ubiquitous, you probably won't need anything more than this phone for most travelers.PS It worked okay for the first trip to UK (where it was used for two weeks), and then one years later, tried using it in China. But battery won't hold charge and then the phone completely fell apart. It's cheaply made. But not too upset. You get what you pay for and it worked for a couple of weeks.