The 81-day experiment

The Apple iPhone performing well from Europe

So far so good. The Apple iPhone is doing the job during my trip overseas. I already took care of several urgent e-mails using the iPhone. I am able to access my e-mail accounts (POP and IMAP accounts) and with the IMAP account which is retrieving e-mails from an Exchange server, I can see the e-mail folders and even file items within folder.

So far, and 24 hour into my trip, the data usage on the Apple iPhone indicates:

Sent: 631 KB

Received: 3.9 MB

That is about 10% of the 50 MB monthly international plan.  At this rate, I will probably reach the 50 MB limit in the next week or two, and then any additional data usage will cost 2 cents per kilobyte. So an additional 50 or so MB of data would cost $1000.00

Finally the Apple iPhone and AT&T international calling plans are becoming clear

After having talked to more than five different customer reps, and probably spend a couple of hours with them on the phone in the last week or two, I got the Apple iPhone internationl plan setup. Here is the final outcome, at least for now:

1. The ATT World Travel Plan

This costs $5.95/month or so and give you a discounted rate in Europe ($0.99/minutes as opposed to $1.20/minute or so) and also disscount on text and picture messages.

2. The interntaional provisioning plan

I purchased an additional data plan for $59.95/month or so that provides me with 50 MB of data transfer. This will hopefully be enough for checking e-mail and writing a few, when I am on the go in between locations. There is also a 20 MB plan available at $24.95/month, but I thought 20 MB may not be enough for my trip.

3. Visual voice mail got disabled while basic voice mail is still available

It seems that Apple customer service rep was right. The visual voice mail got disabled, while I can still call the basic voice mail service, and check on voice mail messages. In this case, the charge will be a regular per minute charge with no additional data charge (so the 2 cents per kilobytes will no longer apply).

4. E-mail attachments still a danger

It was confirmed that there is no way to disable sending attachments to the Apple iPhone. This means that large attachments can become expensive if you exceed the data volume that is allowed in the international provisioning that you choose. I chose the 50 MB international provisioning plan ($59.95 per month), so if I get attachments that end up exceeding 50 MB in total, the cost for the excess data is 2 cents per kilobyte.

5. Discontinuing the plans upon returning to the U.S.

One thing to remember is that the additional plans I added above, need to be disabled after one returns to the U.S. This is not done automatically. So another call to the AT&T support team will be necessary.

How about monitoring the data usage while overseas

Even though I was told that this cannot be done, I discovered later that the Usage screen in the iPhone settings, does track the data downloaded to the device, and it does offer a reset button which allows you to reset the statistics. I am hoping that resetting this at the beginning of my trip will help me keep an eye on the data usage.

Helpful resources and reminders

The Smartphone Experiment book: The Apple iPhone and 11 other smartphones were reviewed in The Smartphone Experiment book--how to select your smartphone in 5 easy steps. If you are looking for a smartphone, the book offers a comprehensive review of the most popular models as well as the worksheets that can help you assess your needs and make an informed decision.

Please use your smartphone safetly and "don't type and drive". If you have friends and family who are smartphone users, please send them the "don't type and drive" greeting card.

Finally, check out the "don't type and drive" video, and help us spread the word about the "don't type and drive" campaign.

The Apple iPhone visual voice mail, a great feature locally, but how about when you travel internationally!

As I continue to get ready for my trip to Europe (and research the details of the Apple iPhone international plans, and how to avoid being surprised with a thousand dollar bill upon return), I am finding out more about the "visual voice mail" capability that the Apple iPhone offers.

According to Apple, we can disable the visual voice mail feature--which seems to be quite costly during an international trip as explained below, but still have the basic voice mail service. However the AT&T customer service rep today mentioned that I would have to completely disable voice mail in order to turn off the visual voice mail feature.

Visual voice mail is a nice feature in the Apple iPhone. It basically displays your voice mail messages as a list, which you can then scroll through and tap on the desired voice mail message to listen to it. When you listen to a message, you see a visual indictor which you can slide forward or backward to quickly jump to a certain point within the voice mail message.

The visual voice mail feature makes voice mail almost like e-mail, which means more easily trackable, and retrievable, instead of having to sequentially listen to all messages to get to the desired message.

However, to provide the visual voice mail capabilities, the iPhone downloads the voice mail messages as data files, which means a lot of data is being transferred to the device. This is not a problem when you are in the U.S. knowing that the data plan provides unlimited data, but when traveling, the 2 cents per kilobyte can make visual voice mail quite expensive. If my calculations are correct, the number would add up as follows:

1 MB message will cost $20

10 MB worth of messages will end up costing $200

And 50 MG worth of meesages will end up costing $1000

So what is the solution? If the Apple customer service rep is right, then I should be able to disable visual voice mail and keep the basic voice mail service during my trip. If the AT&T customer rep is right, then I would need to completely disable voice mail, and be without voice mail to avoid the extra voice mail charges at the 2 cents per kilobyte.

I am still searching for the answer, and hopefully my next call to the AT&T technical support will lead me to the answer!

Helpful resources and reminders

The Smartphone Experiment book: The Apple iPhone and 11 other smartphones were reviewed in The Smartphone Experiment book--how to select your smartphone in 5 easy steps. If you are looking for a smartphone, the book offers a comprehensive review of the most popular models as well as the worksheets that can help you assess your needs and make an informed decision.

Please use your smartphone safetly and "don't type and drive". If you have friends and family who are smartphone users, please send them the "don't type and drive" greeting card.

Finally, check out the "don't type and drive" video, and help us spread the word about the "don't type and drive" campaign.

How costly will taking my Apple iPhone to Europe is going to be?

  After hearing all the horror stories about smartphone users coming back from overseas with their Apple iPhone and being surprised (or shocked) by their iPhone bills (in the hundreds or maybe one thousand plus dollars), I thought I would do my homework and talk to the AT&T customer service, and get the real story.

After about a half-hour call, I did get the story, and not sure yet if it is the complete story, but at least it is a start. Here is what the story looked like, and I hope that this will help make my come back to the U.S. easier with no major surprises. So here are the pieces of information that I gathered:

a) It seem that adding an interntional package is the answer. The international package can range from $29.00 or so for a 20 MB data plan, to $60.00 or so for a 50 MB data plan.

b) The customer service rep recommended turning automatic retrieve of e-mail off, which can be done from the iPhone handset. I am not sure if that will help much, because once I retrieve e-mail manually, it is going to retrieve everything, and download the same amount of data. But maybe the automatic checking of e-mail has some cost associated with it. Still to be determined.

c) In terms of e-mail attachments, it doesn't seem to be possible to turn off the downloading of attachments. This is interesting because it means the 20 MB and 50 MB may be taking up pretty quickly.

d) It seems that voice mail (the more sophisticated "visual" voice mail in the Apple iPhone) could also be very costly overseas. Voice mail messages seem to be downloaded as data, and therefore a long message translates to lots of data (i.e. lots of megabytes). This can eat up the 20 MB or 50 MB very quickly. The suggested solution here was to disable voice mail during my trip. This is not something I can do myself from the iPhone handset. I need to call the AT&T customer service to do that.

e) How about phone usage? The per minute charge in Germany for instance is $1.29, but with the international package, the cost per minute drops to $0.99. Sending text messages and picture messages cost $0.5 and $1.30 respectively. Receiving text messages and picture messages depends on your home plan, and doesn't seem to incur extra charnges.

So what is the conclusion so far?

- Get one of the international packages before you travel
- Tell everyone you know to refrain from sending you big attachments (let us see if I will be able to find a more elegant solution)
- Disable voice mail before you go by calling AT&T and then re-enable it when you get back
- Remember that every minute on the phone while overseas will cost you at leat $1, so be concise, precise, and talk fast.

There will more on the topic as I continue to gather information, and then the final and important report will take place when I get back.

Happy overseas traveling and iPhoning!