I've used my phone overseas with local SIM cards a lot, but recently had a surprising experience where one local SIM card simply wouldn't work with my phone but did work first time on my partner's, even though both were similar (unlocked Android phones) and another SIM card from a different local provider did work. Looking into it, it looks like there are various different standards around, but it all gets very technical very quickly.
Is there any simple way of looking up which SIM cards in a particular country will work with a particular model of phone, for calls, texts and internet access?