Taking Your Phone Abroad: Data, Insurance and the Things That Break

What you sort out at home

A device that goes travelling deserves a quarter of an hour of preparation. Make a backup, so that a lost device only costs money and not photos. Note down your IMEI number and put it somewhere you can look at it without your phone, for example in an email to yourself. Check that Find My is switched on. Have the most important maps and tickets ready offline, because airport wifi is no guarantee. And do not only charge your device, but also take a quick look at your cable: a cable that already charges intermittently at home will give up entirely on the road.

Data on the road

Within the European Union you use your contract as you do at home, with the same bundle. Outside the Union that does not apply, and that is where the bills people are shocked by after the holiday come from. You have three reasonable options. You buy a travel bundle from your own provider, you put a second line on your device as an eSIM with a local or international data package, or you turn data roaming off and work entirely on wifi. If you choose that last route, also turn off background app refresh and do not forget that a navigation app without data is worth little. Download the map of your destination before you leave.

If you use a second line, check for each line which one is for data and which one is for calls. Otherwise your regular number makes expensive calls home while the data package goes unused.

Insurance: first look at what you already have

Before you buy anything new, it is sensible to check what is already in place. Many families already have cover for theft or loss away from home through their home insurance or travel assistance, sometimes with an excess and a maximum amount. Some payment cards offer cover when you have paid for the trip with that card. In all cases the same applies: without proof of purchase and without an IMEI number there is little you can demonstrate. So keep the invoice for your device digitally, and in case of theft always report it locally. Without that paperwork a claim does not start, however clear the story is.

What breaks in the summer

After every holiday period the same list comes past the workbench.

• Sand. Fine sand creeps into the charging port and into the speaker grilles. It no longer charges, or the sound is muffled. Do not blow anything into it with compressed air, because then you push it further inside.
• Water. An iPhone can cope with a splash, but the seal of a device that has been going for years is not what it was. Salt water and chlorine are the worst, because they leave something behind.
• Heat. A device that lies on a dashboard or a towel in full sun for an afternoon loses battery capacity that does not come back. The screen can be left with stains from it too.
• Drops. Tiles, quaysides and pool edges. A case with a raised edge around the glass makes more difference here than any screen protector.
• Strange chargers. A cheap charger in a holiday home or a usb plug with poorly regulated voltage can damage the charging circuit. Take your own charger with you.

If it does get wet

Turn the device off and do not charge it. Charging a wet device is what causes the most damage, not the water itself. Wipe it dry, hold it with the charging port facing down, and put it in a warm but not hot place. Rice does not help and leaves dust in the openings. The sooner a device that has taken in salt or chlorine can be opened to be cleaned, the greater the chance that the board will make it. That is work for a workshop: in Zarren we do that cleaning and the board-level repair ourselves, with micro-soldering, instead of writing the device off.

What the warranty does and does not cover

We are clear about this, because it is the question that comes up most often after a trip. You have 24 months of warranty on the device and on the battery. That warranty covers what goes wrong from the inside: a battery that declines too quickly, a sensor that fails, a part that does not hold up. It does not cover drop damage or moisture damage, because that is not a defect in the device but an accident. Such a repair is possible, but it does not run through the warranty. What exactly is covered is on the page about warranty.

On the road and in the hotel

A few things you only come across when travelling. Put your device and your power bank in your hand luggage and not in your checked baggage, because that is both a rule and common sense. Count on your boarding pass, your bank card and your hotel reservation all being on the same device, so take a charger you trust and possibly a second cable. Avoid charging at a public usb port at an airport or on a train if you can; use your own plug in a socket. Set a passcode that nobody can read over your shoulder, because a device on a terrace is gone faster than you think. And do not leave your phone on the towel in the sun while you go swimming: that is the combination of heat, sand and absence that produces the most damage.

The sober conclusion

A trip is not the place to test your newest device. A case with a raised edge, your own charger, a backup before you leave and data you have arranged in advance together cover almost everything that goes wrong in practice. And if you would rather not take an expensive device to a place with sand and salt water, then an older model is exactly right for that: it works fully, it has been checked on 32 points, it left here with a new screen and a new housing, and one more scratch keeps nobody awake.