I mean, I live in Germany, but I work for an american company based in Orange County (Southern California, USA) and Verizon seems to be the king over there as the CDMA technology allows them to cover 10 times the range of what a GSM tower can cover. Verizon is NO option for a european like me as to have their simcard you need to have a phone that they purchased in batches and registered in their infrastructure. You cannot bring in your own phone, even if the tech specs of the phone are fine. You simply can’t. Well, they won’t you let BYOD (bring your own device). Unless it is an iPhone 6s [probably Apple forced them to preemptively register all their IMEIs in the network]

Anyhow…

If you are living in Germany, you do need a phone that has the LTE FDD frequencies 3,7 and 20 (in MHz 1800, 2600 and 800) according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks_in_Europe

If you live in Italy, same set of frequencies.

If you wanna travel to US, and don’t wanna have to purchase a phone from Verizon (it will take you at least 6 months of contract with them to get it unlocked… so, until you can put in your italian/german simcard) you have to go for T-Mobile. Therefore… frequencies LTE FDD 2,4 and 12 (again in MHz 1900, 1700 and 700a -> no clue what’s the “a” stands for) Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks#Americas for further details.

Well… the only phone that has LTE FDD frequencies 2,3,4,7,12,20 all in one, is the Samsung S6 EDGE -> http://www.samsung.com/us/explore/galaxy-s-6-features-and-specs/

It also has at least one match for Docomo (Japanese carriere) required frequencies: LTE FDD 1 (2100 MHz) … forget about the others: 9(3), 19(5,26) and 28. It was already a miracle for me to put my hands on a prepaid “data only” simcard while in Tokyo on spring last year. Apparently you cannot have a “voice” simcard unless you are a resident…

Has anybody else found another phone suitable for a “global traveller”? Possibly cheaper than the S6 😉 …and maybe dual-sim too… k, now I’m asking too much I guess. 😀

UPDATE: [strike out 1] The Nexus 5X as it has all the frequencies I need plus it is a an LTE Cat 6 phone [strike out 2] The Sony Xperia Z5 (it has also an internal microSD slot) The Motorola Moto X Style (more cost effective, and has up to 128Gb microSSD card slot) is most likely to be my next phone. Thanks to Fra Costa for introducing me to Project Fi (very cool indeed, but I’m not US based). Here is a list of all the other LTE Cat 6 devices…  (not only Cat6)