With winter in full swing, and March Break only a few weeks away, we know that a lot of you are no doubt planning a getaway. If those vacation plans include an iPhone and a trip outside the United States, your time abroad could quickly turn into an expensive proposition, thanks to your telecom’s data roaming fees or even worse, a lost or stolen iPhone. Fortunately, we've got tips to travel smarter with your iPhone.

Know your Tech

If you plan on using your iPhone to stay in contact with your friends and loved ones back home, you'll need to know whether or not it'll work where you're going. As you undoubtedly know, Apple smartphones now come in two flavours: GSM and CDMA. On the surface, the phones are seemingly identical, but beneath the hood it’s a different story. CDMA, an acronym for Code Division Multiple Access, is the transmission technology lurking inside those spiff new Verizon handsets. CDMA is currently the dominate cellular standard in the United States and a few areas of central Asia. While this might sound like great news for CDMA handset owners looking to travel abroad, it really isn’t. CDMA phones are often locked to one network, and are devilishly difficult to unlock, meaning that if you want to use it outside of your network’s regular service area, you’ll have no choice but to either incur a painful amount of roaming charges or to buy into to an international airtime plan -- provided your carrier offers one.

GSM, which stands for Global System for Mobile Communications, is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. If your iPhone is rocking a SIM card, it’s a GSM phone. GSM networks are currently active in 212 countries and territories world wide. Your phone’s SIM card, which stands for Subscriber Identity Module, contains the phone owner’s subscription information, as well as a truckload of other data.

Roam Where You Want To

The easiest way to travel with your iPhone is to use it as you normally would. Most telecoms that offer GSM or CDMA hardware as an option -- AT&T and Verizon included -- have made deals with other telecoms around the world to ensure that no matter where their customers roam, they’ll be able to use their iPhones. Unfortunately, the cost of international roaming is high. Make a few calls home from a foreign country, use a data-connected app, stream a movie or download an email attachment and you could be looking at a cellphone bill that costs more than your airfare.

To take some of the bite out of these roaming charges, many telecoms now offer add-on data roaming plans designed for customers who plan on travelling abroad with their smartphones. To be sure you understand your options, contact your provider a few weeks before your trip and get those data roaming ducks of yours in a row.

Alternately, you can nix your iPhone’s data abilities, by going to Settings>Network>Data Roaming and flipping the virtual sliders. In doing so, you’ll guarantee that as soon as you leave your network’s coverage area, your handset won’t be able to transmit or receive any information. Once you arrive at your destination, check with the front desk of the hotel you’re staying at to see if they offer free Wi-Fi to their guests. If so, it’s game on for streaming, sending and receiving.

You can also opt to place your iPhone into Airplane Mode. Just click on the Settings icon and flick the Airplane mode switch to On at the top of the page. This will turn off your iPhone’s ability to communicate via Bluetooth, cellular or Wi-Fi, effectively turning it into an expensive iPod touch.

Pay As You Go

Owners of GSM iPhone 3GS and 3G handsets who aren’t fussy on the international data packages offered by your telecom, or plan on being abroad for an extended period of time might also want to consider the use of a telecom that specializes in providing cellular plans to travellers. Cellular Abroad is a great example of this. Boasting National Geographic’s stamp of approval, Cellular Abroad can hook you up with a SIM card compatible with older iPhones and boasts a great set of features including free incoming complimentary U.S. And UK phone numbers, and dirt cheap rates for outgoing calls.

The company has a few options for iPhone 4's (either carrier) as well, as they offer a number of low-cost cellular handsets to help you stay in touch with your life back home while you yuck it up out of the country. Depending on where you’re traveling, they can even provide you with a MiFi portable hotspot. That’s enough to make any globetrotting geek squeal with joy. Obviously, going with a cheap secondary handset while out of country is also a great communications option for travelers that would rather leave expensive items like their iPhone safe at home.

Keep it Safe

 A great trip can be ruined by the loss of something as valuable as an iPhone -- especially if you’ve been using it capture your holiday video and photographic memories. With Apple’s free Find My iPhone service, there’s no excuse for losing track of your handset. By registering your iPhone with the service, you’ll gain access to a number of sweet features including the ability to locate it via GPS from any internet connected computer, remotely lock or wipe the handset and even to flash the smartphone’s screen with a custom message for anyone that happens to find, or let’s put it out there, happened to steal your iPhone.

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