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Unless you feel like splurging and spending $600 to $700 on an unlocked iPhone, taking Apple’s smartphone when traveling outside of the United States can be a bit tricky. Here’s how my experience went in Europe.

Before I reflect, I should point out that the tips in this story might not be applicable to everyone. Even I was a bit surprised by a few twists, which I’ll explain below. However, certain constraints include the iPhone model, the carrier, which country you’re going to and maybe just how nice the sales person you speak to is.

So here we go. Ahead of jetting off to live in France for a year, I decided I still wanted to hang on to my iPhone (the first generation) to use abroad. I had never upgraded at this point, and at the time of departure, this smartphone was approximately three years old. (Obviously, I was eligible for an upgrade with AT&T at that point, but I was holding out for what would eventually be the iPhone 4 I have now.)

I knew my iPhone was locked, but I heard from friends who had moved abroad before that they were able to break or put their contracts on hold for various reasons. When I called AT&T’s customer service (Apple can’t really help in this regard, so don’t bother with them), I explained that I was moving for a work program, and I would be away from the U.S. for at least eight months. I asked what I could do, and the customer service rep informed me that I could only put it on hold in cases of extreme emergencies (i.e. health, death in the family, etc.) or if i was in the military. Neither exception applied to me. However, there was at least one thing I could do to save money:

Tip #1: If you’re going abroad for at least one month or more, cancel the data plan – if possible.

This could be catchy for some users as contracts often stipulate that you have to have both a voice and data plan. However, since I was well beyond the end date of my contract, I could do whatever I wanted with the plan. So I dropped the data plan, which meant I only had to pay $40 each month I was gone. (You might be wondering why I didn’t cancel altogether and just pay , but I still wanted to keep my U.S. number for personal and work-related reasons here.)

The next problem was figuring out how I would be able to use the iPhone abroad with another carrier’s SIM card. I had already resolved to put my AT&T SIM card in a Motorola Razr (which can be unlocked by oneself by just going to the AT&T account page and obtaining a code specific to that model). Using the Razr allowed by to have my U.S. number accessible when needed and then I would put a French SIM card in the iPhone as I would be using that more often and I planned to get a data plan over there.

Tip #2: Go to a local brick-and-mortar AT&T and Verizon store and ask for advice in person.

This is where I might have just gotten lucky based on who I spoke with. When I explained my situation to the employee, he actually gave me a 10 percent off coupon for another private mobile phone shop that would unlock my iPhone for $35 (when you incorporate the discount). This could have been because that local (and truly official) AT&T store had some kind of deal with this shop, and/or because my iPhone was so old that AT&T didn’t care about it anymore.

[Thanks: http://www.zdnet.com]