[ivyc88]

I have a samsung cell phone purcharsed in the USA from the US Sprint.

I currently have a contract with the US Sprint.

I plan to move to HK in a few months.

May I bring the phone and use it in HK with the HK mobile carriers?

Which cell carriers are good in HK?

Thanks.

[KnowItAll]

What is the Samsung model? Is it a tri or quad band GSM / PCS phone? If yes, then it may work (assuming that Sprint has not sim locked it).

If the phone is sim locked, you will need to call Sprint and get them to unlock it. They usually do this after you've been with them a certain number of months and tell them at you will be travelling overseas and using pre-paid sim cards etc.

Mobile Phone Companies --
http://www.three.com.hk
http://www.smartone.com.hk
http://www.peoples.com.hk
http://www.pccw.com

etc etc .. lost count of the newer ones.

Browse around on their sites for the english translations

[penguinsix]

Is Sprint PCS GSM compatible? I always thought it was hit or miss, with some phones being GSM and others being something else. I guess it really depends on what model phone and, more importantly, whether the phone is UNLOCKED.

Check the model number of the phone and then call Sprint to see if it is unlocked (or even if it is GSM)

[ivyc88]

The model is SPH-A500. It is labeled as a dualband tri-mode phone.

So may I use it in HK?

[kimchee2]

you should be able to. i brought a samsung phone as well from the US/Sprint. I just brought it to a corner phone shop in Wan Chai and they changed it to use HK sim cards and it was HK$150.

[insert5]

ah, your Samsung model is a tri-mode CDMA phone (which don't use simcard). I doubt any Hong Kong cell-phone service provider still offer CDMA services

from my experience: Most phone-service provders in HKG use GSM coverage. So let's get a GSM tri-mode (GSM850 or 900/1800/1900) mobile phone manufactured by Nokia, Siemen, Sony Ericsson from Cingular. Good luck.

[penguinsix]

Your phone is on these bands:

CDMA2000 1X 1900/800 / AMPS 800

Many of the American carriers "hardwire" the information normally contained in the SIM cards into the phone. Verizon does it, and I guess from the previous post, so too does Sprint. Essentially it means you don't have a SIM card (the easiest way to switch carriers) and thus, your phone is hard locked to Sprint (unbreakable). Not entirely sure, but that's what it sounds like.

Your phone is a 3G phone from Sprint. I'm not sure, but in talking with the the 3G people here there are all sorts of problems using 3G phones from other places (and vice versa). I was told that if I bought a 3G phone here in HK, I would not be able to use it on the 3G networks in London (that was 2 months ago, things may have changed, may have not).

There are CDMA cards I've seen here, but if your phone is hard set to Sprint, I think you are out of luck.

http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/samsung/sph-a500.html