Re: Two Questions

Ken Blake wrote on Mon, 02 Dec 2024 11:24:33 -0700 :

I'll be in Europe (Spain, France, Italy) this coming March and April.
 I have a Google Pixel 4a. What can I do to enable my phone to make and
receive calls while I'm away?
 What can I do to get walking maps of the cities I'll be in into Waze
or Google maps.

I'm a purposefully helpful kind-hearted person so I wrote up a lot below to
help you (and to help others like you) route offline while they travel.
If you have a T-Mobile post-paid plan in the USA, you're "probably" covered
since my basic plan covers me in my visit to Europe every year with free
unlimited data & unlimited roaming & unlimited texting (including MMS).
Hotspotting/tethering (which they call the same thing but it's not) is
limited to only 5GB/month per phone on the T-Mobile basic postpaid plan.
Even if you do NOT have the basic T-Mobile plan, most carriers 'should'
allow you to buy an enhanced plan (particularly for data) on a monthly
basis (e.g., T-Mobile offers a $10 per month addition for hotspot data).
In that T-Mobile basic plan, the only thing you pay for is phone calls. They're 25 cents per minute, coming or going, to and from the phone.
That is, they're 25 cents per minute calling the USA or receiving a call
from the USA and 25 cents per minute calling locally or receiving a local
call. That's the only expense - but you can get around that expense too.
Make your calls on Wi-Fi (if you can find a local access point that is).
If you're not on T-Mobile, ask your carrier if they have a European add on.
If you don't have a plan that covers it, you'll need a SIM card that does
have the service where you'll be traveling - where the frequencies "may"
matter (Steve always talks a lot about that) but in my experience, most
phones have at least one frequency that is the same as the local area.
And that one frequency is all you need.
You may need to turn on roaming though, so I would advise you to call your
carrier at 611 on your phone and ask them how to turn on your roaming.
As for maps, what's wrong with OSMAnd~ offline maps?
 *OsmAnd& Maps & GPS Offline by OsmAnd, In-app purchases
 Free, ad free, 4.5 star, 153K reviews, 10M+ Downloads
 <https://osmand.net/>
 <https://f-droid.org/repo/net.osmand.plus_431203.apk>
 <https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/>
 <https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd>
You can download Google Maps offline, which I did for years when it first
came out, but it's so much of a PITA that I don't bother with that anymore.
While I am aware you're not all that technical, someone technical like I am
easily uses geoPDFs of any area in the world which you can download and
route and show your position (all the USA parks and every inch of the USA
except for the military locations has a free georeferenced PDF for that).
Most people use Avenza for routing on georeferenced PDFs.
 *Avenza Maps* Offline Mapping by Avenza Systems Inc., In-app purchases
 Free, ad free, 4.6 star, 72.6K reviews, 1M+ Downloads
 <https://www.avenza.com/avenza-maps/>
 <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Avenza>
 <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id388424049>
But I use Paper Maps because it has fewer limitations than does Avenza.
 *Paper Maps* by Abbro Inc, In-app purchases
 Free, ad free, 5K+ Downloads
 <https://www.paper-maps.com/>
 <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.abbro.androidmap>
 <https://apps.apple.com/app/nextmap/id1147385120>
While this is for technical people, meaning not so much for you, what I use
also is a site which generates geoPDFs for any area, such as Caltopo.
 <https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=40.14529,14.83154&z=5&b=mbt>
 <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.caltopo.android>
With Caltopo, you can plan a route and save it on a georeferenced PDF.
Then you can load that georeferenced PDF & route into any map program.
 <https://www.offline-maps.net/>
 <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.psyberia.offlinemaps>
There's more (much more) if you know what you're doing, as I never have any
problem in Europe (I visit Germany every year like clockwork) routing.
Good luck. Most of what I said above is for experts though.