just wait and see

In short: network towers.

My old phone, a HTC Wildfire was designed for Telstra’s next-G network. This means that the radio towers it picks up are unique to telstra (HSDPA 850/2100). I found this out the hard way when I tried moving to another Australian network and could hardly get reception in the middle of the city.

There are multiple frequencies of 3g radio towers (Four I think, maybe five) and most phones are only designed to pick up a select few (The ones that the network provider uses). However if I am planning on travelling and want to use the local networks I need to have a phone that can pick up as many providers as possible.

The popular phones (Iphones, also the samsung galaxy S) are designed to be homogenous, while the less popular phones try to save costs by making the same phone in different versions (Each version picks up different networks eg the HTC Wildfire A3335 vs the HTC Wildfire A3333). So the popular phones can pick up a greater range of radio frequencies.

Which means I can change between networks easily with an Iphone, while my oldphone was essentially useless on anything but telstra.