Having ordered the iPhone 4 as soon as the unlocked iPhone 4 came available for NZ it was of great relief that it arrived a week before departure of our (wife & myself) 6 week European tour.
I was somewhat perplexed as to what technology we should take – would the iPhones work for us without the need for a laptop? I did say iPhones as one was for my wife and one myself. We felt we would be fighting over it if we had just one and if we went our own separate ways for a day at least we could keep in touch. In the end I did take a little laptop but more about that later.
The sum total was two cameras, one laptop, two iPhone 4s, an in car GPS and all their associated chargers. We could have dispensed with the car GPS but the iPhone Tom-Tom holder was not yet suitable for the iPhone 4 – at least not without a modification. And a friend had an in car GPS unit with the European maps we could borrow and the size of it was about that of the iPhone Tom-Tom holder. So no real advantage between a dedicated GPS unit vs. the iPhone version. We did however download the Tom-Tom European app. in the hope of using it for navigating while walking around if we did not have a data plan for a particular country.
The chargers were all different in that our cameras were different makes, a laptop and the only common element was the two iPhone chargers. So 5 chargers in all and the thought of 5 European mains plug adaptors was seemingly over the top. So, the solution was a NZ power plug strip (available in any electrical store) to hold all the charger plugs and therefore just one European adaptor. This worked very well as one has trouble tracking down an unused power outlet for many accommodation rooms we have been in.
So all that packed way and a few app’s from Apple’s iTunes store and we were ready to go with the first stop Rome (via transfers at Sydney and Dubai). And there the concerns arose! In Dubai planes cancelled leaving for Christchurch and the iPhones buzzing with texts from friends and family. We had left Christchurch just 12 hours before the earthquake struck and the chaos that ensued. What to do, board the plane for the final leg to Rome or head back to Christchurch to potentially a wrecked home? But we couldn’t even fly back if we wanted to as the Christchurch airport was closed. So still with only a hint at the degree of damage Christchurch had sustained, we boarded the plane to Rome and hope for the best. On the plane the entertainment system provided a news service but the only info was a brief two sentence statement that Christchurch had been hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake – not much to go on.
The first task when in Rome was to ditch the NZ Telecom Micro-SIM’s for a local card so we could make use of cheaper calls and texts messaging. This proved very easy by joining up with 3 ITA, an Italian service provider. The SIM’s cost 6 Euros each and they had a special for “new” customers, the first 3 Gig of data was free! What a bonus and that data was put to immediate use by Skype’ing over the iPhone to friends and family to assess the damage to our home and get a picture of what was happening in Christchurch generally. It turned out our home had only minor damage that did not require immediate attention and so can be left until our return. I did have to file the EQC damage claim on line and this was a breeze using the iPhone. So, thumbs up for the first significant use of our new iPhone 4’s!
The first two weeks was in Italy and the plan provided by the Telco was very useful. Many B&Bs did not have any Wi-Fi. Also getting off the train and finding your way (usually walking with our back packs – kiwi style) to our accommodation made navigation flawless. Google maps could not have been more useful in that regard. Although once when we got off the train the iPhone indicated a walk of 2 km, just within our “walk” criteria rather than “find public transport” in the hot Italy climate – but to our surprise the route took us straight up the hills and by the time we got there we had quite a sweat up. A new (and not yet on Google maps) metro could have done the job for just 1 Euro.
Some comments about the applications we used:
- “near to here” was very useful if you have a data plan otherwise it does not work even if there is Wi-Fi available. This was excellent for accessing Wikipedia and providing the information on the things where you are physically located. There is nothing worse than seeing something very interesting and obviously of significant but having no information on it We discovered this app. only late in the trip through Italy unfortunately.
- The NZ Post ”send a card”. Good service and we put it to good service. However could do with a tweak on the application because if the text message is too long it does not tell you how much too long and you have to cut little bits out and re-submit multiple times until it comes back to say it is successfully downloading.
- Tom-Tom for Western Europe. This would be OK for driving and even though it has a walking mode, it was not nearly as good as Google maps guiding you on a walking route.
- Most disappointing were the “Lonely Planet” guides for Rome and Florence. We originally thought it would be best to have these for their off-line capability but the navigation and maps seems to have bugs and would hang up or would only let you zoom in and not out. They seem not to be able to tell where your were and provide the details of what you were looking at but you had to go in and search for what was near-by and select off a list and often not on the list anyway. Maybe they were just not optimised for the iPhone 4? Those points of interest that were listed, the level of content just could not in anyway match the content you could get from Wikipedia. We also had the “Lonely Planets” guide for the Spanish translation. This was OK but my wife, not too trusting in placing all her faith in the iPhone app’s decided to take a phrase book for Spanish. Comparing that with the iPhone app. there was just no comparison, the book gave much more detail albeit more room in the luggage but for around the same price as the Lonely Planets app.
- “Dig to China” – it was also interesting to easily visit your home’s exact antipode and see what is on the exact opposite side of the planet. We did this and found a fascinating little local community. Although our house antipode location happened to be in the middle of a field containing a donkey.
- Facebook & Skype both proved to be useful and easy to use. It would be good when Skype provide a video calling service for the iPhone 4.
- MobileMe – Ok storing as a backup your key travel documents but not much else. We would have liked to have backed up our photos but uploading each photo one at a time would take forever (maybe there is a app. that can upload multiple sets of photos that we do not know about) but even so, the cameras these days, the photos have large file sizes and to upload many gig’s worth would take a lot of iDisk storage and bandwidth. So not probably of significant use to the holiday traveller.
There is obviously hundreds of app’s that we do not know about that could be useful but these were what we used and experienced
Once we left Italy our free data plan did not work. We were however hooked in appreciating the usefulness of being able to roam and use the data capability of the iPhone but it proved impossible for us to buy a Micro-SIM card at either the Vodafone or the Orange service providers. I believe they are available but the local shops we tried simply indicated (“indicated” as they did not speak English and we did not speak Spanish) that they could not provide the Micro-SIM cards or were not available in their branch. So in went the NZ Telecom Micro-SIM cards in case we needed to be contacted but turned off the data service due to being so expensive. I have read some other blogs and it may be possible to order a Micro-SIM card and posted to you before travelling to Spain. It may be that the iPhone 4 was too new and the Micro-SIM cards were not yet readily available – but very disappointing all the same as we would have paid for some data going from our positive experience in Italy. Portugal is also the same as Spain, the shops we visited could not provide a SIM card. So the hunt is always on for accommodation and cafes that provides Wi-Fi.
Then it comes to the laptop … This has proved to be a worthwhile companion to the iPhone, particularly for the long holiday we are currently taking. Storage of the photos from the camera downloads and then sync’ing them into the iPhone has been great. Also, I believe that the iPhones could have been charged via the laptop when the laptop was placed in sleep mode and the laptop itself was being charged (maybe a bit slower but overnight it should have been OK). This would have meant two less chargers. Even some cameras can be charged via the USB port and maybe even fewer chargers are needed.
All in all, the iPhone 4 is always in our pocket or hand extremely useful for the active holiday trip
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