I have now acquired my second iPhone, linked to a contract with Vodafone Greece (the local Apple partner). This time I chose a white one to differentiate between the Greek phone and the black O2 London phone. On balance, having played with both, I think I prefer white. Somehow the phone looks slimmer and sleeker.
The reason I've had to get another phone is that my UK phone is locked to O2 and I wasn't interested in jail-breaking it to work with a local Greek network. I need a contract SIM while in Greece because roaming costs, particularly for data, are prohibitive.
There's a bonus in all this. The new bar of white chocolate in completely unlocked. The Greek phone market doesn't indulge in locking. The concept is alien and, I suspect, is illegal as it is in some other European countries. So I have a completely open phone which, if I wish, I can use with the O2 SIM card in England. I will probably do this because keeping the data of some applications synced between two phones can be a pain.
Downside is cost. The unlocked phone cost €400 and the €40-a-month (for twelve months) contract is miserly when compared with O2's £35 offering. I get 100 minutes, 150 SMS and 500GB of data in Greece. That compares with 600 minutes, 500 SMS and unlimited data in England and, interestingly, the O2 minutes and texts roll over to the following month. So after a month's absence I have 1,200 minutes to play with.
I'm now fully operational in at least two countries. The problem comes when I visit a third country: do I use the O2 or the Vodafone SIM? I need to spend some time comparing roaming rates and, more importantly, roaming data bundles. More on this when I've done my homework.