Talk:All countries/@comment-91.158.123.202-20180414122218/@comment-25567354-20180530010634

I recently used Flexiroam on two phones, a Samsung S9 with a nano sim tray and a Samsung Note4 with a micro sim slot. I purchased two Flexiroam stickers, applied one to my home nano sim for use in the S9, and the other to a dead nano sim for use in the N4. The dead nano sim was part of a triple sim kit. I punched out the micro sim spacer to use in the N4.

Applying the sticker was straightforward. It was easy to align the nano sim in the included template and place the sticker.

Flexiroam worked in US, IE, DE, UK, immediately upon powering on my phone after landing. In US, I was only able to connect to ATT even though their website lists partnerships with Sprint and Verizon. The S9 does support Sprint and Verizon frequencies. In IE and DE, looks like Flexiroam favored Vodaphone even though Flexiroam's website said they partnered with multiple carriers. In UK, it switches between EE, O2, Voda, with a preference toward EE. LTE coverage in all countries, with occasional HSPA. Latency is sufficient for voip calls.

Flexiroam toggles between your home sim and the sticker via an app. One issue I noticed on the dead sim was I was unable to toggle to the sticker in the N4. I managed to toggle to the sticker in my S9 then move it to the N4, still in roam mode. Since the base sim is dead, I plan on keeping roam mode active, never toggling back to home mode.

Flexiroam's local / regional plans are sometimes cheaper than their global plans, depending on countries and duration. In EU I topped up global plans because they were more cost effective than per-country or all-EU for the data allowance and duration I wanted. In Oct 2018, I plan on using Flexiroam in SG and JP, where local plans are cheaper for the allowance / duration I need. Will have more to report then.

Flexiroam prices might be more expensive than local sims, but at least in the EU countries I visited, the premium was worth the convenience of having immediate data access upon landing without needing to acquire a local sim. No need to ID register in DE or unlock content in UK.

Another quirk I noticed was Flexiroam continues to consume data when I turned off my phone's mobile data and switched to wifi. I was surprised at how quickly my plan was depleting, even when I was using wifi whenever I could. My measured daily usage was comparable to back home, when I stream music on my daily commute. As an experiment, I turned on Airplane mode to fully disconnect from the mobile network before turning on wifi. This resulted in more reasonable measured usage.