Seven lessons from holiday

[Rafe]

Steve Litchfield reports back from a week of family holidays, enlightened by plenty of chances to learn more about using a smartphone productively. Seven days away and seven things learnt! Steve ranges from network connectivity and practicalities of GPS to the terrors of sand.

Read on in the full article.

[Tzer2]

Examining this (and my wife's E51) at the end of the holiday, both of which had been pocketed whenever humanly possible throughout the week, revealed sand inside the battery compartment, sand alongside the memory card, sand everywhere. It was eye opening to see how far sand could penetrate.

Sounds like a job for the 5500 Sport?

I recently participated in Nokia Maps market research that fed straight into the Maps team. It was for a very limited amount of people in about 3 countries, so had some weight. I tested Maps extensively beforehand and came up with around 26 significant flaws, and a couple of good points about Maps. The 4 others in my group came up with similar things, or agreed with mine. We are all power users who knew our nav software. Upshot: Maps is currently close to unusable, when alternatives are available. It is untrustworthy and frankly is at early beta stage in terms of features, bugs and most of all, usability. I have heard that the efforts will be towards making Maps 3.0 the first "decent" maps version. I hope they incorporate all our findings, particularly true offline navigation as TomTom has. Currently I use TomTom for driving, and Google Maps for walking. Both are far superior to NM. The irony is, I WANT Maps to be the best, it certainly has the potential, especially with the pre-installed user base it is increasingly enjoying. Here's hoping Nokia sort it out - it is perfectly possible.

[bartmanekul]

^ Exactly my sentiment, and what I have said before.

[ashu]

I agree. Version 3 is what probably will be more accurate (I don;t know if they are coming with one and if yes then when!).

Slow data makes laptop ulmost reduntant even for me. Point taken on phone camera and getting family adjusted to that Steve!

But then your point of sands and phone, i don't know what would i do without my n 82 even for a day?? I do so many things from it. I write posts, take pics, send mails (the personal ones!!!), surfing just too much. I will rather go with rafe's advice of a zip cover. If that is not enough I will put it in a zip pocket. If that is not enough, i will get into a zip blanket with holes for my nose and eyes!!!

However, the battery drain, did you not try out Solio's cell phone, i pod and what not charger?? I believe they are super cool. Just try them out. Don't know the exact proce but i think its between $90 - $100. Even then its worth a buy.

www.solio.com

[Tzer2]

Maps is currently close to unusable, when alternatives are available.

I think that's a little extreme, it's saved my life on many occasions when I had to know where somewhere was relative to my current position, and the data it provided was free.

That's just me talking as a pedestrian though, things may be different for drivers using the pay-for routing (and if you pay for something you have a right to demand a much higher quality product of course).

[Bassey]

Unless you are surfing using your phone as a modem or downloading large files (and you're on holiday, so why?) it's usually just easiest to leave the phone in GSM mode. EDGE networks are available everywhere now and it's more than adequate for the vast majority of the time. Lets face it, 95% of the time the phone is in standby either waiting for a (GSM) phone-call or text or push email. None of this requires 3G. Even most websites aren't exactly slow on EDGE. It's only really media intensive stuff like the BBC. Standard web searches etc are also fine on EDGE. With the right software, it's a couple of steps to turn 3G off and on and turning it off when you don't need it will save a load of battery. And who wants to send their holiday worrying about battery life?

>> Maps is currently close to unusable, when alternatives are available.
> I think that's a little extreme,

OK, I'll rephrase: Map's poor design, ill thought out interface, and bugs make it a major pain in the arse to use, when anything else is available. Most notably for driving, or simply looking up a spot. Walking not much better (routes were flawed and the same as driving ones).

[snoyt]

Hi Steve, liked the seashore shot, I hope it was with the N82 ;^)

Some contributions to your seven:

1) Being on the borderline of wifi range will do the same. A telltale sign is when the battery is getting warm from the continuous power drain.

2) Good signal reception does not even mean there is internet either when roaming, it depends on the contracts you provider has with the roaming party.

3) Panning is a good technique, setting the sensitivity way up, will cause the shutter time can go down. thus getting less motion blur. The disadvantage is a bit more image noise but definitely a good trade against motion blur. Works best in well lit/ sunny environments.

4) Maps occasionally advises me to exit and reenter a highway. It seems to assign no time penalties for such transitions for routing. Use your brain first, the blond, ehh, blind babe in the phone second.

5) Nice car park picture. In car parks photograph the parking space number in case you forget after a long busy day or your points of reference are gone because of sundown or fog. Create a placemarker in Nokia Maps. Park garages, do it outside, mark the pedestrian entrance, some are actually really semi hidden place.

6) T-mobile web and walk cheapest version in the Netherlands is bandwidth limited but not data limited. Indeed a steal, probably a similar apackage is available in most countries. Neither does it not restrict voip usage. Though out going voice is a bit stuttering on occasion, listening cheaply to the voice mailbox is a blast. Particular when roaming for 2 euros per MB.

7) How about an older Nokia 6250? It not only survives being driven over by a truck in Nokia's commericals. It is garanteed by Nokia to survive a drop from 1 meter height onto concrete as well as seriously water resistent. I have one and it still works. Oke the semi-smart g'zOne's are even better but a lot pricier with GPS and a IPX7 specification. Sadly not worldwide available.

[shoobe01]

What's wrong with bagging a phone? As long as it's tight (add rubber bands) there is minimal crinkle noise, so you can make calls thru it, push buttons, etc. Photos are not so good for various reasons, but it's a solid solution for temporarily waterproofing (dustproofing, etc.) anything, otherwise.

[Tzer2]

Walking not much better (routes were flawed and the same as driving ones).

I don't think you need routes when walking though.

If you can see both your destination and current location on a map, that's usually enough for a pedestrian, because travelling on foot is a lot slower and more flexible than travelling in a vehicle.

I agree map data is sometimes not complete, but that's the fault of the data rather than the application, and it seems to vary tremendously depending on where you are in the world.

[stuclark]

If T-Mobile's pay as you go Web n Walk packages seem good, then you should try the ones us contract customers get.

For £12.50 per month, I get truely unlimited use of T-Mobile hot-spots (yes, UN-limited) and 3GB of data, although T-Mobile admit they will never actually cap anyone at that amount.

That works out at under half a pence (0.4p) for over 100 MB (102MB) per day!

WOW,a great article and globally applicable..........

[ceanth]

Steve what program do you use to 'mark' your carparking space? Sounds like a really good thing to do with a smartphone

[bills2north]

speaking of holidays I noticed on the Greek island Samos the service operator changed 3 times in one day. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen! Do I dare open the telephone bill???

Also had mobile modem for my laptop and noticed as a "guest" got a better lock-on than the "agreed" network service. Again, waiting for the other shoe to drop

Btw, practiced video recording of Air Berlin planes flying overhead at the beach. Prepping was easy..just listen for the turbines on take-off 1k away!

Good article. Always like your show too. Keep it up!