The Apple iPhone continued to serve my needs well as my trip progressed. I had busy days, or even a period of a few days, where I did not even get to open my laptop, but still felt up-to-date and well connected via e-mail on the iPhone.
However, checking e-mail has been a slow process. It seems that connecting back to the home servers, and roaming through networks, takes its toll. Checking e-mail was more than just a few-seconds exercise. Even though I didn't time it yet, it seems to be more like a 15 to 30 second thing, if not more. Obviously I could have e-mail automatically retrieved every 15 minutes or so, but I am still trying to preserve battery life and kilobyte download.
The Apple iPhone usability really shines. Changing the time zone, so that the calendar, the clock, and the alarm are in synch with the local time is easy to do. Having multiple clocks to see the time in previous and future destinations is also helpful, not to mention monitoring the weather easily in all destinations. Camera and photos are one of the most admired feature especially when it comes to zooming in and out with the fingers, and filpping from one to the next easily and quickly. And of course, music and videos are quite useful during long trips. However, the maps and internet are not as helpful, knowing that the time it would take to load a page is too long--except in instances where a Wi-Fi network is within reach.
It is towards the end of my trip, and the data usage on the Apple iPhone is showing approximately:
Sent: 3 MB
Received: 30 MB
That is still way within the 50MB plan that I ordered! It seems that the trip will come to a conclusion, and there will be unused MB's. Not bad!
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