Thanks for the detailed update, John. Just a couple of quick comments that might help others: regarding being a “US phone”, I suspect it’s more that your Apple account is tied to the US app store, and Vodafone Portugal doesn’t make its app available there. Same end result of course, but just pointing out that it’s likely the account rather than the phone that makes the difference there.

Regarding iMessage not working — I wonder if it’s related to the ‘insufficient deposits’ messages you were getting. We talk more about it in this article, but basically there’s a situation where Apple tries to send a “silent SMS” to your phone to verify iMessage when you swap SIMs. Some providers charge to receive that SMS, and if you don’t have any credit on your phone, it will fail, iMessage won’t verify, and it won’t work until you put your old SIM back in or add credit to your account.

Could be something entirely different, but it does sound a bit like it.

I was hiking on the Camino for several weeks and then toured Portugal for several weeks. I bought two separate SIMs.

Vodafone has a very busy kiosk at the Airport and but it was simple to get a sim card installed for 20Euros that provided 5 gig of data. It was also suppose to have a lot of cell minutes as well as some international call time of about 30 minutes.

The data worked quite well throughout our hike to Santiago. We were able to track each others location using “Find my Friends” and exchange texts using WhatsAp. I was able to use iMessage to friends in Fiji and the USA. We used the data to locate our next place to stay and make reservations. Unfortunately, there are some phone numbers in Portugal that require an additional cash deposit. One of those is the Vodafone help line!

There is a Vodafone Portugal app, but because my phone was somehow identified as being a US phone, I could not install it. One would think that a minor inconvenience since after all you can still use Safari. Unfortunately, the Vodafone Portugal web site is all in Portuguese. There is an option for choosing English, but that just takes you to a page telling you about Vodafone. Still, you can register your phone number and create a password. Unfortunately, Safari in 12.4.1 kept messing up the password I was trying to type in. Somehow I managed to make the same mistake twice and created a password that would not work and which my iPhone failed to register so I had to find a Vodafone store and get help recreating the new password.

OK, now I have access to watching my phone usage. 5G was more than enough for the month. Other than failing to be able to call the owner of one of the hotels we were staying at (the front desk wasn’t being manned) no problem.

Well, I knew my SIM was only good for 30 days so as I was flying to the Azores, I went to the Airport kiosk to buy some more data and phone time. They looked at the web site and it had a 22 Oct date for my data to expire, the day I was leaving to return home. Well, that was a lie.

So the next day when I was in Porta Delgada, my phone stopped working. Panic set in. I did find a Vodafone store, but they insisted it would be cheaper to purchase a new SIM rather than extend my old one. (There was a long period of time where I kept telling them what Safari said about my SIM expiring and what had actually happened.)

So the new sim was installed. It was suppose to have all kinds of free instant messaging on it for iMessage, WhatsAp and several other apps. “Chat Pass incluido”. “Politica de Utilizacao Responsavel 10GB” “500 min ou SMS para todas es redes” for only 9Euros.

Well, the data worked, but the iMessage never worked. In fact, when I showed it to the folks at the vodafone store, they insisted I turn off iMessage. That didn’t help that much either. I finally gave up and went away since the data was working, but for the next week Vodafone kept popping up a message telling me that I had insufficient deposits in my account. It would happen at random times but sometimes several times within a minute.

We were late getting to our rental because we believed Siri about the “shortest route” which lead us down a dirt path covered with mud. Because of the mixup in sims, we failed to get emails telling us how to call our hosts. Luckily, we were able to use Google Voice to call the 800 number in the USA to talk to Hotels.com and they provided us a number. We were also able to set up a hotspot and use our mac to send and receive some texts so we were delayed an hour but did get into the rental.

Verizon would have charged $10/day so that was not an option. Others in our group used T-mobile which included some international time. They were well served throughout the trip.

(T-mobile does not work at all at my home nor in Fiji. I use Vodafone Fiji and other than the fact that their web site will charge you multiple times for the same top-off, which my credit card will just delete when I tell them, their service works “just fine”)

Our trip would have been impossible without the phone. Just be aware that Vodafone Portugal isn’t exactly US phone friendly.

Hi Nancy,

We actually reviewed KnowRoaming a few years ago — you can find that review here. It may not be a bad option if you’re only in Portugal for a few days, but you’ll pay more (potentially, quite a lot more) if you’re there for longer. If you’re going elsewhere in the EU on that trip, bear in mind that a Portuguese SIM will continue to work in those countries without additional charges.

The details you need are in this post for Portugal, and in this one for Spain. You will be able to use the same SIM in both countries.

That’s frustrating, but sadly it’s not particularly uncommon. Many providers around the world won’t let you top up on their website using an international debit/credit card because of fraud concerns, and since eg. Spanish stores don’t sell top-up vouchers for Portuguese phone companies, you can’t do it that way either. It’s unfortunately not a Vodafone or Portugal-specific issue.

If you think you’ll need to top up, either because you’ll use up your calls/texts/data, or because you’ll be using the SIM for longer than the initial package lasts (usually a month), all you can really do is add enough extra credit to cover your expected requirements via a physical voucher etc at time of purchase, or at least before leaving the country you bought the SIM card in.

Awesome, thanks for the update Steve!

The Vodafone sims were 2gb and 19.99 euro, a little pricy, BUT we needed to have them when we got off due to the logistics of the trip. I used the service to the max while out on the road and it worked like a champ. I was in some remote-ish areas and never an issue. Totally worth it in my opinion to spend a few extra bucks and when the plane landed we were all set up.