how to avoid roaming charges while out of the country. - Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

[Q] How do I use my Vibrant for gps and wifi while avoiding roaming related charges when in Canada or another country?
[A] this is the question I asked support at t-mobile. I got 2 answers, neither were completely correct. The problem is that you cannot block IMs and phone calls from reaching your mobile unless you go into airplane mode. (Note that you will receive charges for IMs and for calls you do not pick up as long as they register on your phone. This is what I was told by one rep. Other reo said that I should not be able to receive these since my account was not set up for international services, but as msgs and calls came in, I got worried.)
The short of it is this: for $20, I bought CoPilot off the android market and downloaded the North America maps. This app does not require data connection, and it works remarkably well. I then put the phone into air plane mode. After doing this, I enabled gps and wifi. This allowed me block all direct calls and IMs while retaining the ability the ability to use the phone for gps and for browsing when there was an available wifi network. (having a google voice account actual enabled me to send IMs when connected to a wifi network.)
It all worked so well, I am further considering dropping my data plan altogether since the places I typically use the internet are places with wifi (though perhaps I will wait until the 2.2 update is pushed.)
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

---

pyrusman said:
[Q] How do I use my Vibrant for gps and wifi while avoiding roaming related charges when in Canada or another country?
[A] this is the question I asked support at t-mobile. I got 2 answers, neither were completely correct. The problem is that you cannot block IMs and phone calls from reaching your mobile unless you go into airplane mode. (Note that you will receive charges for IMs and for calls you do not pick up as long as they register on your phone. This is what I was told by one rep. Other reo said that I should not be able to receive these since my account was not set up for international services, but as msgs and calls came in, I got worried.)
The short of it is this: for $20, I bought CoPilot off the android market and downloaded the North America maps. This app does not require data connection, and it works remarkably well. I then put the phone into air plane mode. After doing this, I enabled gps and wifi. This allowed me block all direct calls and IMs while retaining the ability the ability to use the phone for gps and for browsing when there was an available wifi network. (having a google voice account actual enabled me to send IMs when connected to a wifi network.)
It all worked so well, I am further considering dropping my data plan altogether since the places I typically use the internet are places with wifi (though perhaps I will wait until the 2.2 update is pushed.)
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In terms of GPS, you are correct, you would have to purchase a third party GPS app for that (since google maps doesn't cache. Well it does, but if you find yourself lost after choosing a route and don't have wifi available then you are forced to turn on data so it can redownload your route, since it only caches your route and nearby streets.) To block incoming phone calls you just set up unconditional call forwarding (**21*18056377243# send) which will forward all of your calls to VoiceMail. The 1805 number can be replaced with your VM provider of choice (ie Google voice.) To undo, just dial ##21# and send. After that just disable data roaming and you are good.
In terms of stopping IM/SMS/MMS, just have care add message blocking (or better yet, go to your tmobile account and add it from there) its a free service that blocks all incoming or outgoing sms/mms/email as sms/IM. Sometimes the reps will just add the sms/mms block so you might want to add it yourself from the site.
Also if you purchased the vibrant on a contract then you can't remove your data.

---

pyrusman said:
[Q] How do I use my Vibrant for gps and wifi while avoiding roaming related charges when in Canada or another country?
[A] this is the question I asked support at t-mobile. I got 2 answers, neither were completely correct. The problem is that you cannot block IMs and phone calls from reaching your mobile unless you go into airplane mode. (Note that you will receive charges for IMs and for calls you do not pick up as long as they register on your phone. This is what I was told by one rep. Other reo said that I should not be able to receive these since my account was not set up for international services, but as msgs and calls came in, I got worried.)
The short of it is this: for $20, I bought CoPilot off the android market and downloaded the North America maps. This app does not require data connection, and it works remarkably well. I then put the phone into air plane mode. After doing this, I enabled gps and wifi. This allowed me block all direct calls and IMs while retaining the ability the ability to use the phone for gps and for browsing when there was an available wifi network. (having a google voice account actual enabled me to send IMs when connected to a wifi network.)
It all worked so well, I am further considering dropping my data plan altogether since the places I typically use the internet are places with wifi (though perhaps I will wait until the 2.2 update is pushed.)
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or if you want to keep the FULL functionality of your phone while traveling internationally you could buy a prepaid SIM for a carrier in the country you're visiting.

---

Col.Kernel said:
Or if you want to keep the FULL functionality of your phone while traveling internationally you could buy a prepaid SIM for a carrier in the country you're visiting.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this ^^
If you did not want to get a SIM, you could just take your t-mo sim out. This way you could still use wifi, then use Google voice for texts and VM.