Hi,

the Nokia tri-band phones are significantly more expensive than the dual band phones.

Does it matter which one I buy?

What countries will a Dual Band NOT work in?

Quad bands are the best.

There are 4 GSM bands (well 9 but only 4 to worry about). Go to the bottom of this link and check the table for the countries you will be visiting. This should then give you and idea of which phone you need. (links a bit old but details are still good)

http://www.thetravelinsider.info/roadwarri...dbandphones.htm

You may also want to consider a multi-mode phone TDMA/CDMA.

A dual-band phone is fine for everywhere but the US, Japan and Korea. Japan and Korea are on TDMA/CDMA, and the US uses 1900Mhz instead of 1800Mhz or 850Mhz instead of 900 Mhz for their GSM network.

umm... nice link dsys Forgot Canada... and a bunch of other small countries that I don't travel to, also have 1900 and 850, but these are primarily South America and islands in that part of the world.

If you need to use it in the US, go quad-band. My Thai tri-band phone is almost useless here. Almost... it has a little bit of value, if you happen to be in the US for a couple days.

Otherwise, stick to a dual-band phone.