Your phone in China vs your phone at home

Your phone works. It's the apps on it that split into two groups the moment you land, and the split has nothing to do with signal strength.

What works exactly as it does at home

• WeChat, Alipay, Didi, 12306, Meituan, Amap — the apps the country actually runs on. All of them have English versions or are usable in English, all take foreign cards, and none of them care where your SIM came from.
• Banking, airline, hotel and booking apps — normal.
• Apple Pay, Google Wallet-style tap-to-pay — works where the terminal takes it, which is less often than you'd hope. The local apps are the payment layer.

What quietly doesn't

Google's services — Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube — don't load on the mainland network. Nor do WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, X, or a good number of Western news sites. Google Maps has a second problem beyond the network: its data for Chinese cities is years out of date and its transit directions don't work here at all, so even with a workaround it's the wrong tool for finding the metro.

Set expectations before you fly and set the workaround up on home wifi. That's the whole of the phone guide.

Why the local apps have their own rules

They're not apps in the Western sense. WeChat and Alipay are platforms with mini-programs inside them — the metro code, the museum reservation, the food delivery, the doctor's appointment, the train ticket, all living inside the same shell. That's why one QR does everything, and why setting up both apps matters more than downloading six separate ones. They also run on real-name accounts, which is why the passport verification step exists and why hotel and ticket bookings all carry your name as printed.

The map question, since everyone asks

Apple Maps is the better Western option in China and it's fine for walking. Amap (Gaode) and Baidu Maps are what locals use, better on transit and fresher on addresses, and Chinese-only — which stops mattering once you're navigating by saved pins rather than typing. Save the hotel as a pin on day one and the language problem more or less disappears.