I’m writing this while I travel back to the US from London. Last week, I had written an article about applications that I was planning on using while on the trip. Despite the best of intentions, I did not use any of the applications I had last week. But I did manage to use a gadget that I thought I would let everybody know about: the Lenmar ACUSB4 AC travel adapter.
For my trip, I had looked at purchasing several adapters because I knew I would be needing to charge my gadgets. I purchased the Apple World Travel Adapter, the Lenmar World Travel Adapter, and a Kensington Travel Plug Adapter. The only adapter I ended up using was the Lenmar 4 port USB travel adapter.
The Lenmar 4 port USB travel adapter comes with adapters for almost anywhere in the World, the UK/Japan/Hong Kong, the US/Australia, and Mainland Europe amongst others. With the proper adapter you are able to charge 4 USB devices simultaneously, no matter which country you are traveling towards.
The adapter is capable of handling an iPhone 3GS, an iPhone 4, an iPad and another Cell phone all without a problem. This was invaluable to make sure that my gadgets were able to call somebody if I needed. I did not use the Apple travel adapter because it only has one port, and could not be used to power more than one gadget at a time. That would not work very well if I needed to charge more than one item overnight. This device worked without any problems, and I am even using it at home now instead of the four different ones.
In addition to bringing a USB travel adapter, there are a few tips that I suggest for iPhone owners — particularly in the United States. Call AT&T and ask them if they are able to allow other SIM cards in your iPhone. I say this because I could not get a SIM Card for my iPhone from T-Mobile. Granted, this could have been due to the incompetence of the store that I went to and the fact that they did not care about what I was looking for and just made some assumptions regarding what I was needing.
I did contact AT&T regarding calling in London, which they were able to add to my account but I never actually used. The only thing that their ‘International Dialing’ services does is reduce the cost of calls by $0.30 per minute. So if you do not believe as though you are going to be making that many calls it may not be worth the $6.99 per line to add to your account.
Another thing to keep in mind is that text messages will cost you more money than standard text messages. Therefore, if you have a bunch of services that send you text messages, like Facebook, Twitter, Dominoes, or any other service, you may wish to go ahead and stop the text messages unless you want to pay an arm and a leg while you’re abroad.
There is one last option for calls that you could purchase a phone for use in your destination country. These can range anywhere from $30 to $100 or even more depending on capabilities. I debated on whether to buy one, but I knew I was not going to be making that many phone calls and determined that the best option would be to just make the phone calls on an as needed basis instead of paying $30 for a phone that I was not going to use.
