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Will the S6 work in most countries?

V

vpelton

Member
I live in the US & want to travel to a lot of foreign countries (e.g., South America, Africa, Europe) & want to get a phone that will work in many countries. I was thinking of the Samsung Galaxy S6.

For the 2G bands, it looks like it has everything it needs (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900).

For 3G, I'm not sure. It has a bunch (e.g., HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100). I checked Peru & it uses: 3G 850 /1900 /850. Is that the same thing? What is HSDPA? The map I'm looking at has HSPA+. Is that the same as HSDPA?

For 4G, the phone has this & others: LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 17(700) - G920T. Peru has: 4G LTE Movistar 1700Mhz; 4G LTE Claro 1900Mhz. Is that the same?

What happened to CDMA?

So, in summary, will this phone work in many countries? Thanks.
 
I would expect the S6 to have pretty good international compatibility, but you are wise to check in detail.

The first thing is to check what bands the particular S6 model you are thinking of supports. There are usually many variants of Samsung Galaxies, all with the same name but different model numbers. For example, you ask about CDMA: the answer there is that there are CDMA variants, but if you are considering a CDMA model you should check what that version's UMTS/HSDPA/LTE bands are as they may not be identical to the more common models.

If your question about CDMA related to roaming, it's not common outside of North America, so don't be surprised to find no coverage in most countries.

2G GSM is safe - there are only 4 bands, and it will certainly support those (almost all phones do).

HSDPA, HSDPA+ are different speed grades of 3G (though I believe some carriers tried marketing HSDPA+ as 4G, using the usual marketing rule of "when we use a word it means whatever we want it to mean"). In general just the frequency band is enough to tell you whether it will work (e.g. 2100 will be fine throughout Europe). There are a few odd networks that use different bands for uplink/downlink (T-Mobile come to mind, though I think they might be moving away from that), in which case you need to check carefully for compatibility.

For LTE the "band number" is a more reliable measure than the frequency band, since some bands have very similar, even partially overlapping, frequency bands, and may also differ in other ways. There's a list here.
 
I'm told if I buy a Galaxy S6 in the USA with Verizon, I would get model # G920V. Assuming that's correct, I found this link:

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s6_(cdma)-7164.php

It has CDMA in the title, but it also lists other bands. You say "so don't be surprised to find no coverage in most countries". But if it has CDMA and GSM, HSDPA & LTE, then that would be ok in other countries, right?

I also found a map showing what's used in each country:

http://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html

For 3G, it says the phone has: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100

For 3G for Peru, the map says: 3G 850 /1900

So, since the frequencies match (as you say), I guess that's good for 3G. Even though the map doesn't say anything about HSDPA.

For 4G, it says the phone has: LTE band 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 13(700)

For 4G, the map for Peru shows: Peru has: 4G LTE Movistar 1700Mhz; 4G LTE Claro 1900Mhz.

You say to just look at the "band number", but that's not listed on the map, just the frequencies. The frequencies match is that good enough? Or, do I need to find the band number for Peru to be sure? If so, do you have a link?

Thank you so much for the info.
 
Yes, what I meant was that you won't find CDMA coverage in many countries. The CDMA S6 has GSM capabilities, so should still work when travelling.

HSDPA is just slightly more advanced WCDMA 3G, and you can assume it includes the lower-speed versions. So it should be good for 850/1900 in Peru.

According to Wikipedia the Peruvian networks are using bands 2 and 4, so again it looks like you are OK.
 
Hadron, thanks for the Wiki link & all the other info. I can now rest assured the phone will work in other countries. I appreciate your info very much.

mikedt, thanks for your info also.

P.S., the guy in the Verizon store said GSM is a type of carrier & LTE is a speed so a service can use the GSM type with LTE speed for 4G. Doesn't seem right to me. Is it?
 
He may just be over-simplifying (or may not really understand, hard to tell). In the States you have 2 big GSM-based networks (owned by ATT & T-Mobile) and 2 big CDMA-based networks (Sprint and Verizon), and all of them use LTE for 4G. So if what he means is "you can use LTE-capable handsets on GSM-based networks (provided the frequency bands are compatible)" then he's correct, but it's glossing over the fact that LTE is a different technology from either GSM or CDMA. And GSM isn't "a type of carrier" (a carrier is a company, not a technology), but the technology used by 2 of the 4 big US carriers.

GSM is a set of standards and protocols which are used in most 2G networks worldwide. WCDMA/HSDPA 3G networks and LTE are evolutions of this, though actually very different technically from GSM in many respects (the radio interfaces being the most visible). So while LTE requires a SIM, like GSM, and has some back-end similarities, the radio transceivers, the way the data are encoded and the way the spectrum is used are all quite different from "GSM" (which refers to the original 2G technology).

If you want to dig further there's plenty of info on the web, but the alphabet soup gets very dense quite quickly, are you've probably spotted already!
 
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