You want to use your smartphone while traveling abroad. But choosing an affordable method can seem mind-numbingly complicated. Should you buy an international roaming plan? And if you do, what does 100 megabytes of data get you anyway? Perhaps you need a hot spot pass? Or a SIM card? If you don't want an eye-popping phone bill, it's essential to decide before you're on the plane.

"The pain you can get from just a couple of mistakes can be big," said Bill Menezes, a principal research analyst covering mobile services for the technology research firm Gartner.

With a little planning, however, you can stay in touch and on budget. Let's walk through the three simplest ways to do just that, from the most obvious to more creative (and cheaper) solutions.

Phone company plans

Major domestic phone carriers offer prepaid voice and data packages designed for foreign travel that you can buy before you fly, the option many people feel most comfortable choosing. The cost of a text message or the cost per minute of a phone call is fairly straightforward (check your phone company's website for pricing). But the cost of data -- sending text-only emails, posting photos on Facebook, checking into Foursquare, searching the Web for the addresses of restaurants and monuments -- is not.

Srini Devadas, a computer science professor at MIT, said sending emails doesn't eat a lot of data, but the fun stuff does. "It's the photos and videos and the maps," he said, explaining that emailing a single high-resolution photo is 2 to 5 megabytes. He estimated that a 10-minute video call would be about 24 megabytes.

Companies including Verizon and AT&T have megabyte calculators on their websites that let you estimate how much data you'll need by selecting the things you plan to do (send emails, upload photos, surf the Web) and for how long.

None of this is a science. How much data you use depends on a variety of things, including the resolution and size of your photos and videos. Always opt for the lowest when sending or uploading. Another way to save: When walking around a city, use offline mapping apps such as City Maps 2Go and OsmAnd, which can work without an Internet connection. (Such apps can take a toll on your phone's battery life, so consider the time-honored tradition of carrying a paper map.) And, of course patience will save you money: Spend the day taking all the photos and videos you want, but upload them later using Wi-Fi at your hotel.

Bottom line: Phone company plans are not always the most affordable way to go, but they offer one-stop shopping directly with your carrier.

SIM cards

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Three ways to beat data fees when you travel overseas