[Galaxy Note5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] IT_Architect:
I would challenge you to validate what you get from FrequencyCheck.com. FrequencyCheck.com looks professional, well referenced, and well positioned in web searches, so I depended on it to come up with a compatible list of phones for the county I plan to visit and live in. FrequencyCheck didn't jibe with what blog and forum users were saying and lesser-known compatibility checking tools on the web, but I assumed FrequencyCheck was the definitive source, and the others not so trustworthy. At great length, I noticed blogs, forum users, and another tool seem to be consistently agreeing with each other, and Frequencycheck showing different results. I did a quick cross-check of the specs published on phone manufacturers' sites. I don't remember Frequencycheck agreeing with the manufactures specs exactly on any of the phones that initially made my list. When I did the same for what carriers published as the bands they used, it was the same story. You might be surprised what one mistake on the phone specs, combined with one error on the wireless carrier bands, does to a "list to choose from". Unless it is a something like an iPhone, or a new international phone with every frequency known to man, the phones Frequencycheck showed as compatible with the wireless providers, were not. Some of the phones that Frequencycheck showed had serious limitations with the couhtry's carriers, and I passed on because of those limitations, turned out to not have any limitations at all. I'm quite surprised I even noticed the situation or that I even acted on it after I did, but I am sooo glad I discovered this BEFORE buying a phone, setting it all up, and then going there only to discover I have lousy voice and/or data, the screw around and lose all kinds of time, buying a phone from the closest vendor and paying too much for a phone I don't want, in order to get by, and then have to set that all up, while people in the states are wondering what is happening.

These are what I use now.

1. Use this to find out the bands you need for a country. It will show you all the bands used by all of the carriers. https://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html

2. Based on 1, use this to determine which phones will work with the bands required: https://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3? This is a bit labor intensive. After you enter in all of the bands you want to support, it will list the models that support what you are after. You can add and remove some of the more minor bands from your search, and it will immediately show you the number found with your current combination so you can refine the number of choices you have. It shows pictures of the phone in the list and you can see if there is a model you like. However, you then must click on each one to determine the sub-models it applies to. For several of those returned, there will be no sub-models that would work for you. E.G. it might be for a foreign language or a phone the carriers of your native country does not support.

3. Use this to check if a certain phone will work with the wireless carriers in a country and where the problems are with all carriers by simply selecting "All" for the carrier. https://willmyphonework.net/ This also serves as a validator of the information used in step 1 and 2. 1 shows you the frequencies you need. 2 shows you the phones that qualify using the bands from 1. 3 shows if one of the phones that 2 says is compatible, is. I haven't found any ambiguity yet. If there were, you would be showing a problem in 3 that 2 said was compatible, based on what you gave it from 1. 3 does model and carrier together and does not use the data from 1 or 2. 3 is also a very easy efficient way to determine if the phone is compatible with the carriers of the adjacent countries. You simply change the country name, select "All" again for the wireless providers, and you know in an instant. There is one phone on this site I had trouble with, the Note 8. It listed models I had never seen before. When I checked them out, they were for the Galaxy Note 8 Tablet, and they don't have the information on there for the Note 8 or Note 9 phones. Everything else has worked fine.

4. Next is to define the wireless carrier/SIM you want. You can easily find the market share of the providers in a country and get a feel from people living there and travelers what works best overall. However, the next thing to check is for good coverage map of the places and routes you intend to travel, to see what the coverage is in those areas. It took me by surprise when I found that the number two carrier had much better coverage and much more modern coverage on the routes and areas I would be living in and traveling. Here again, I learned that a less popular coverage map was the most detailed and accurate. https://opensignal.com/networks Again, I checked it against other coverage maps. You click on the area of the map you want to see, then drag it slightly, and all of the detail shows up, such as dead spots along roads, the type of service, 2G, 3G, LTE, etc. I checked it where I knew from experience there were dead spots, and they showed.

When I saw "Frequencycheck", it struck a nerve. Maybe I'm really, really, unlucky, but with the batting average I just encountered, I didn't want anyone to go through what I just went through, and then perhaps buying a very sub-optimal phone from their short list like I almost did. A quick way to challenge your short list is to run it though both FrequencyCheck.com and WillMyPhoneWork.net. Where you find discrepancies, check them against what the phone manufacturers and wireless providers publish.

If you find better, please share it with the rest of us. Thanks!