Cell service in Shanghai/Hong Kong/Tokyo (Hopefully Helpful)

[DisneyRegulars]

This post is specifically about cell phone service for Sprint and Verizon in shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Prior to our trip we couldn't for the life of us figure out which of our phones and in which countries they would work. This is what we found:

China:
Sprint-- My IPhone 7, My Husband's Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge, and my son's iPhone SE all worked on free Sprint Global Roaming. This gave us free text messaging, and incredibly slow 2g data service (pretty much unusable). The text messaging was a little bit unpredictable. Sometimes it worked great, other times we would try and try and just get "message failed to send" messages.

Hong Kong:
Sprint-- My IPhone 7, My Husband's Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge, and my son's iPhone SE all worked on free Sprint Global Roaming. This gave us free text messaging, and incredibly slow 2g data service (pretty much unusable). In Hong Kong we rented a pocket wifi device from iVideo that was shipped to my US home before departure. It worked great for data hungry activities in the parks like Pokémon Go. We also easily downloaded lots of videos to watch.
Verizon: My brother had an iPhone 7 that he bought the $10 per day foreign data service for. This allowed him text messaging and 500MB of data a day which he quickly burned through. He connected to our pocket wifi device.

Tokyo:
Sprint-- My IPhone 7, My Husband's Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge, and my son's iPhone SE all worked on free Sprint Global Roaming. This gave us free text messaging, and FREE UNLIMITED HIGHSPEED DATA SERVICE!!! I rented two iVideo pocket wifi devices that I picked up at the Narita airport post office. We never used them. The free high speed data on our phones was incredibly fast and all we needed.

Verizon: Again my brother had purchased the $10 per day international service for his iPhone 7. He quickly ate through his data. He ended up using my rented pocket wifi devices. At least they got used.

Overall Sprint seemed to come out on top for international service. Their free Sprint Global roaming worked with all our phones, and the free unlimited high speed data in Tokyo was an awesome surprise.

Hope this info helps someone else solve the mystery of "will my phone work in China, Hong Kong or Japan?"

 

[Westcoastwild]

I have Verizon, so yes, that's helpful.

How did the ivideo device work for your brother once he used it?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I have Verizon, so yes, that's helpful.

How did the ivideo device work for your brother once he used it?

The iVideo devices were fantastic in both countries. Definitely buy an external battery because they run out of their own batteries in about two hours. An external battery easily lasts all day.

In HK we had four phones using one device and it was still plenty fast.

 

[Westcoastwild]

The iVideo devices were fantastic in both countries. Definitely buy an external battery because they run out of their own batteries in about two hours. An external battery easily lasts all day.

Great to know. I have two external batteries and didn't think about taking them along for that!

How much Verizon data did your brother run through? I thought it allowed you to use your regular amount.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

Great to know. I have two external batteries and didn't think about taking them along for that!

How much Verizon data did your brother run through? I thought it allowed you to use your regular amount.

It only allowed him 500MB of highspeed data, and then it sent him a text message that his data would be slowed down for the rest of the day. So technically it was unlimited, but it was very slow for the majority of the time. Unusable for games like Clash Royale and other things he wanted to do in line. He wasn't quite sure which ap was eating all his data, but he ran out of high speed data really quickly.

 

[Westcoastwild]

It only allowed him 500MB of highspeed data, and then it sent him a text message that his data would be slowed down for the rest of the day. So technically it was unlimited, but it was very slow for the majority of the time. Unusable for games like Clash Royale and other things he wanted to do in line. He wasn't quite sure which ap was eating all his data, but he ran out of high speed data really quickly.

Huh. Odd. Well, luckily, I'm not a gamer, and hopefully it'll work fine for maps.

If I had to guess, it was a park app, if he was using one. Every wait time diney app I have used is a data and battery hog.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

We couldn't find an official park ap and rarely used the TDR explorer ap. His guess was snap chat. He also played a lot of Clash Royale in lines with his nephew.

 

[doombuggy]

I have sprint and we are going to China and Japan in October. Did you just tell sprint you were traveling? I never heard of the free roaming, and was going to ask about international service while we are away. What about calls if you need to make any (in country or back home)?

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I have sprint and we are going to China and Japan in October. Did you just tell sprint you were traveling? I never heard of the free roaming, and was going to ask about international service while we are away. What about calls if you need to make any (in country or back home)?

We didn't tell Sprint anything, our phones just worked! You have to enable international roaming in your actual phone. When we landed in each country we received a text message that told us about message, call and data rates. I think calls were 20 cents a minute, texting was always free, and data was free but at slow 2g speeds unless in Japan. You can buy a data plan from sprint for $10 a day if you want to.

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I have sprint and we are going to China and Japan in October. Did you just tell sprint you were traveling? I never heard of the free roaming, and was going to ask about international service while we are away. What about calls if you need to make any (in country or back home)?

Attached is a picture of our Hong Kong texts we received upon landing in Hong Kong. The china ones were similar.