Kevin J Edwards

I just returned from another major trip with my iPhone (and iPad in hand). This is my 3rd trip with a rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com and 4th major Flashpacking trip.

See my reviews from previous iPhoneTrip reviews:
Flashpacking into Africa with a Rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com
Flashpacking through Europe with iPhoneTrip.com
Flashpacking through North America without iPhoneTrip.com

On this trip, we traveled to Auckland, Christchurch, and Queenstown in New Zealand, and in Australia we traveled to Sydney, Ayers Rock, Cairns, Port Douglas, Daintree, The Great Barrier Reef and Brisbane.

Once again, the rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com worked flawlessly. My girlfriend though she’d go without renting a SIM, but gave up along the way and had a SIM delivered to us at our first hotel. It’s nice to know that they can ship fast anywhere in case there’s a problem, but still I’d highly recommend ordering your SIM to arrive before you leave.

See my previous reviews to see how thoroughly pleased I was iPhoneTrip.com, for cost savings, connectivity and ease of use. Really, I can’t recommend renting their SIMs highly enough. And more importantly, traveling with the full connectivity it gives you will drastically change the way you travel.

That being said, I have to say that connectivity in general in Oceania is pretty bad. Bad, as in “worse than in the United States”. Data rates are low, and charges are high. Far fewer free WiFi locations exists and those that do have data caps on them. Even 5 star hotels and resorts that we stayed at not only charged for WiFi, but had very slow data rates, and often connections timed out or they capped your connections.

As a result, renting a SIM becomes much more beneficial. I found myself giving up on WiFi in every place I traveled to and went back to 3G for speed and connectivity improvements that the iPhoneTrip.com SIM gave me.

Australia is HUGE, and being so big, it’s not reasonable to expect great connectivity throughout the country, but ironically some remote locations we traveled to had pretty decent coverage. For example, bus and helicopter trips around Ayers Rock were just fine with connectivity, but suburbs of Sydney could have weak or dead spots.

Don’t get me wrong, most places you’d travel to in Australia and New Zealand have good enough coverage for email, navigation, and simple web surfing, but for someone like me who uploads and downloads HD video for work, the difference between the incredibly good connectivity in Europe and the poor general connectivity in Oceania was significant and worth pointing out.

Also to be clear, this is a general connectivity issue through the places I went through in Australia and New Zealand. I wouldn’t be surprised if other places were much better. The iPhoneTrip.com SIM can only be as good as the wireless carriers in the areas you travel to, and the SIM did a great job of switching carriers along the way making the iPhoneTrip.com rental SIM your best option, especially since WiFi simply isn’t an option in many places for demanding users.

If you’d like to see the photos from my Oceania trip check out my photo albums on Facebook.

I just returned from another major trip with my iPhone (and iPad in hand). Unfortunately, I didn’t rent a SIM from iPhoneTrip.com.

See my reviews from previous iPhoneTrip reviews:
Flashpacking into Africa with a Rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com
Flashpacking through Europe with iPhoneTrip.com

My girlfriend and I did a “Noreaster”, traveling through North East America in October/November 2011. We visited Chicago, Niagara Falls, Montreal, Vermont, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Iowa. Since this was mostly in the United States, we didn’t rent a SIM from iPhoneTrip.com.

In Canada, this was very unfortunate. WiFi sucked, and roaming rates were insane. Fortunately we didn’t stay in Canada long enough for this to be much of a problem, and it was during the weekend, so I didn’t have to work much.

So why this review if I didn’t rent a SIM?

Because one can’t pass an opportunity to point out how far behind our wireless carriers in the United States are from elsewhere in the world. This trip was made with my iPad (on Verizon) and my iPhone (on AT&T). Unlike Europe where I had connectivity everywhere with my iPhoneTrip.com SIM, there were HUGE areas around the Northeast with absolutely no coverage on either Verizon or AT&T.

My point here isn’t just to bash the state our our wireless infrastructure in the United States, but also to point out that when traveling abroad, you can rely more on your mobile technology than you can in the US, making the thought of renting a SIM that much more compelling.

If you’d like to see the photos from my Northeast trip check out my photo albums on Facebook.

1) Read information to me.
I’d love to hop in my car and tell Siri to read the top news headlines of the moment. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to go to a configuration panel and select the types of headlines I’m interested in (News, Politics, Sports, Tech, Etc…)

2) Allow 3rd party plug-ins.
Let apps like Shazaam plug into Siri, so I can just ask, “Who plays this song?” or “What song is this?” and have Siri tell me and provide me the option of buying it and putting it in the playlist I want. Many other apps could have plugs-ins around a specific subject area. If you have more than one app in a given subject area, your could prioritize one as the default, but then prefix the question with the name of the app for the second.

3) Allow the changing of settings.
I’m dying over hear with my unjailbroken iPhone 4S and its lack of SBSettings. It would help if Siri could “Turn off WiFi” or “Reduce brightness”

4) Read my email.
It’s strange that Siri will read/write text messages, but while Siri can write an email message, it can’t read one. It should be able to search emails and read specific ones.

5) Allow for corrections.
When taking dictation, it may interpret a word incorrectly. When that happens, it should allow me to say, “Edit, replace tomato with tomorrow”.

What would you like to see in Siri?

From my Monney Car Audio in Redwood City Yelp Review:

Price: 5 out of 5
Friendliness: 5 out of 5
Service: 5 out of 5
Knowledge: 5 out of 5

Monney Car Audio is located at:
2001 Middlefield Road
Redwood City, CA 94063-2830
(650) 299-9991

I had a great experience with this place. Really, just as perfect for service as you can get.

I stopped in on a Monday and explained that I had just purchased a car and really wanted iPhone integration. The owner let me walk around and browse to get a feel for the place without sales pressure.

After telling him what I wanted, he gave me a nice low-priced simple solution. Kind of a “start here” solution. It was pretty inexpensive, but I wanted to find out what other options there were, and if I could possibly afford a killer system.

I was walked through all the options all the way up to the top of the line. I can’t emphasize enough how “no-pressure” there was on this. There was no BS “you need this” or “you have to add that”. He listened to the things that mattered to me, and finally suggested a couple of different models for me to chose from. Not once did he try to upscale me on things I didn’t want or need. For example, the speakers were just fine.

I asked how soon I could get it installed, and he said I could come by the next morning at 10am for same day service. This was great, and I told him I wanted to do my homework and come back if still interested. Still no pressure, he said I could come by or call if I had any questions.

I did a ton of research. I printed out everything I wanted and what the cheapest prices were online. I read online reviews on the products I was interested in, and all the tips and tricks for getting the best out of them.

The next day I returned, much later than when I said I would, and he greeted me warmly. We went over the pricing, and everything seemed perfectly fair and reasonable. My car is a Mercedes, so I really wanted to make sure the work done was first rate.

Here’s where they really deserve a top score: He knew all the insides and outs of both my car and of the stereo. All the research I had done online that was very specific to my car and stereo was all stuff he knew like the back of his hand. I can’t emphasize how important this is. You can have your equipment installed by someone who’s reading the instructions, or you can have it installed by someone who not only reads the instructions but also researches online all the details and issues others have had and has done enough work to know how to do things right. Monney does.

I had other equipment I wanted pulled. Monney was able to do this and still have the car look like new. I really appreciated the attention to detail here.

Although I was really late, it wasn’t a problem. I was offered a ride and a rental car while they worked on it. When I returned, the stereo was perfectly installed without problem and Leo himself went through how the stereo works and waited to see if I had any questions. One problem was with my iPhone itself (Bluetooth), and he knew how to resolve it quickly.

I couldn’t be happier with all of this.

The quality of the work was top-notch.
The in and out was incredibly fast.
They were very knowledgable and friendly.
The *total* price for what I got was better than what I found when I shopped around.

The bottom line, is that there’s a reason why this shop has been so successful in this location as long as it has.

For years now, it’s been unfortunate that Eye-Fi doesn’t make a Compact Flash (CF) version of their Eye-Fi camera cards for professional DSLR cameras that lack the consumer appropriate SD card slots.

However, the latest Eye-Fi cards do work with proper SD/CF adapters in CF based DSLR cameras, at least the set of items I have work fine:
Canon EOS 7D 18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera

Eye-Fi Pro X2 8 GB Class 6 SDHC Wireless Flash Memory Card EYE-FI-8PC

SD/SDHC/SDXC to High-Speed Extreme UDMA mode CF Type II Adapter support 16/32GB and over 64GB Sells for under $15.

I think the key to making this work is the adapter. Not all adapters are created equal, and this one appears to be pretty fast, and doesn’t block the WiFi signal. I’ve seen numerous comments from others saying the Eye-Fi won’t work in the Canon 7D, or other DSLRs that are CF based. Hopefully this clears up some confusion, especially when it comes to what’s needed in a Compact Flash Adapter.

The SDHC Eye-Fi card has a max speed of 6MB/s (48mbps), which is too slow for 1080p on the Canon 7D, but plenty fast for taking pictures (either not in burst mode, or for short bursts).

The Direct Mode of of the Eye-Fi works great, and is really easy to set up if you understand the basics of what an ad-hoc network is. Better yet, the Eye-Fi app is free for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

Pictures transfer really fast over 802.11n between the Eye-Fi and your iOS device, but will also transfer just fine over 802.11b/g.

Images that get transferred show up in the Eye-Fi iOS app and in the “Camera Roll” photo album. The Eye-Fi app is multitask and push enabled, which means you can have images stream over to your iOS device automatically, and get little badge alerts when they arrive.

It gets better…

You can set up your social networks and photo services like Facebook and Flickr with your Eye-Fi account, so images can go directly from your camera to your iPhone and then over 3G be sent automatically to the sites you want. This also includes having them sent via FTP to your blog or website. All of this can also be manually or semiautomatically set up.

A nice companion app would be Adobe Photoshop Express, also free in iTunes. You can use this app to crop and apply all kinds of effects before uploading to wherever you’d like.

If you think about the workflow here for a second, it’s really pretty cool. Imagine being somewhere and having that perfect scene for a nice Facebook profile update. You can take the picture with your DSLR, transfer it quickly to your iPhone, crop and adjust the image, and then upload to Facebook over 3G, or pretty much anywhere with any number of apps and services.

This could also work well for client previews. Of course if there’s WiFi at the location, you don’t need to be in Direct Mode (the ad-hoc network) and can send the images even faster by going directly to the Internet from the camera where a client could be reviewing the shoot in progress.

I would imagine the other Eye-Fi X2 cards work as well, and that they work in the Canon 5D MKII as well has other DSLRs. I’ll be testing other CF cameras out as I get access to them. Meanwhile, the Eye-Fi X2 Pro is working well in other SDHC based cameras such as the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5V and the Canon SD4000is.

Actually, most of this trip was around Europe, and it mirrored much of the trip I took in March with my iPhone and rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com.

Besides going into Africa and the Canary Islands / Madeira, there were a couple of differences between this trip and my Europera 2010 Tour. One difference is that I traveled this time with my girlfriend who decided not to rent a SIM from iPhonTrip.com (she came to regret this). By having her tour with just her AT&T SIM, we were able to see the differences very clearly.

Another difference was that we both had iPads with us along with the iPhones. As before, I also had my MacBook Pro. I was able to tether my iPad and my MacBook Pro to my iPhone using the rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com, and a few times also let my girlfriend tether her iPad and iPhone to help save costs.

Additionally this trip was different in that we traveled by boat, car, and ship in addition to taking the train like the last trip. Here’s the map of our trip:

You can see, we traveled to London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Venice, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Genova, San Remo, Monaco, Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez, Marsaille, Arles, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Gibraltar, Tangiers, Seville, Lisbon Cádiz, Seville, Casablanca, Agadir, Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Madeira, and Frankfurt.

This trip, there were only two times that I could not connect with my iPhoneTrip.com SIM:
1) The Chunnel (under water tunnel between England and France).
2) While SCUBA diving a ship wreck in the Canary Island.

So ya, other than not working under water 😉 I was always able to get a connection, more often than not, a much better connection than WiFi at the hotels.

I could connect in every other country. The data rates were all incredibly fast. In the end, I used multiple Gigabytes of data, and it cost me thousands of dollars less than what my girlfriend spent using international roaming via AT&T.

While the money savings was great, and significant, the connectivity was what I really cared about. I can’t make trips like this unless I can connect at all times and work on the go. Whether it was compiling a report in Rome, or having a conference call as I crossed the Straight of Gibraltar, I was able to work along the way without having to pause my trip so I could run back to a hotel and work.

I mentioned the driving aspect of this being different. The issue here is that connectivity while driving across foreign countries is extremely helpful for navigation as well as translating foreign signs and finding good places to stop to eat.

One thing that’s really fun when using the iPhoneTrip.com SIM is that “it just works”. You can look at your iPhone and watch the carrier logo just automatically switch over.

This was another magnificent trip that I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like without my iPhone along with the rented SIM from iPhonTrip.com.

If you’d like to see the photos from my iPhoneTrip check out my photo albums on Facebook.

An in-depth review follows. Here’s the take-away:
iPhoneTrip allows you to rent a SIM and use it abroad very cheaply. It works extremely well, and is well worth the money. It’s a must-have if you plan on flashpacking.

Pros: Incredibly easy, relatively cheap compared to other options, allows you to travel in ways not possible before. If you also use Google Voice and Skype it makes iPhoneTrip even better/cheaper.

Cons:
You may find yourself over-dependent on your iPhone. You run the risk of being too connected to people/co-workers back home. You’ll use your iPhone so much that you’ll want extra external batteries.

Bottom line:
For me it came out to about $60 a week versus well over $100 on a slow day. I couldn’t afford that, nor could I have done this trip without my iPhone.

Read more below for how I used it with my MacBook Pro, Skype, and Google Voice for free voice calling and SMS messages:

As I prepared for my Europera 2010 trip, I looked into options for using my iPhone 3GS. Coming from America with AT&T the option was to take out a mortgage and pay AT&T outrageous sums of money for international data roaming and sell body parts for a few minutes of voice time.

Another option could have been to get a SIM card in Europe, or even buy an iPhone in Europe and sell it before I leave. Neither of these options would work because I’m traveling to so many countries that I need to be able to freely roam without limitation or concern.

I stumbled across a site called iPhoneTrip.com. Now we all know when something sounds too good to be true, it always is. Except for when it isn’t, and I’ve got to say that the iPhoneTrip SIM has totally exceeded my expectations.

What is it?
It’s a way to cheaply use your iPhone abroad.

You have two options, you can rent an iPhone from them, or you can rent a SIM from them. I chose the SIM rental as I already have an iPhone 3GS configured exactly how I wanted it.

Now before signing up, I scoured the Net looking for personal reviews. I couldn’t find any with real authority and credibility. I actually saw a few posts from others who were highly skeptical and thinking it may be a scam. So here I am. Someone with an online history and credibility…and someone who’s written/produced reviews for such media companies as CNET amongst others.

The SIM from iPhoneTrip arrived via FedEx as promised, the day before departure. I was able to pop it in and test it before leaving. Yes, it worked in San Francisco.

First stop on my trip was London. I got off the plane and inserted the SIM. Almost immediately it picked up the local carrier and gave me 3G coverage. Many European carriers don’t support aGPS, which means that, as I found in London, it can take a long time to find your position if you’ve moved far since the last time it had a satellite lock. It also means that it can’t find your position at all if you are deep indoors. The solution to this is to just be patient. Before arriving at a destination, pull up Google Maps and get walking directions from your train station to your hostel, then start using it as a map until the GPS kicks in and can track your position.

Google Maps is awesome when flashpacking. Take advantage of it with any number of Wikipedia apps that show you what’s around you so you can see cool stuff along the way.

The apps I’m using the most are:
Skype
iTranslate
iConvert
Fizz Weather
Facebook
Hostelworld
Google Voice (via Cydia on jailbroken iPhones or webapp)
iRail
WikiMe
Shazam
Motion Alarm

I’ve also been beta testing an augmented reality app that I can’t divulge too much about yet, but it allows you to use the camera and GPS to point at something and the iPhone returns information on what you’re looking. This technology is going to be very big.

The iPhoneTrip SIM doesn’t require that you jailbreak your iPhone. They don’t mention that you might find that it works better even if you do. I’m also traveling with a MacBook Pro and because my iPhone 3GS is jailbroken, I’m able to tether my MacBook Pro, which is just what I’m doing right now…on a train somewhere between Dresden and Prague.

Also, with a jailbroken iPhone, you can run Skype over 3G (or even Edge). This means that phone calls Skype to Skype are free. Phone calls Skype to landlines back home are free with a $12.95 subscription, and Skype to cell phones are incredibly cheap.

Since you’re replacing the SIM, the phone number on your iPhone changes. You could forward your original number to your iPhoneTrip number, but I didn’t want to do that, so I had my original phone number forwarded to Google Voice. This allows me to read a transcription of the voicemail, or hear the voicemail for free, and then Skype call them back if needed.

Google Voice also allows you to send and receive SMS messages for free. You’ll want to alert people back home to your Google Voice number, so they’ll recognize the SMS as coming from you.

It’s really amazing how well this works and how critical it is on my trip. James Bond never had anything like this. Think about this… I don’t speak a word of any language for most of the countries I’m going to (except a little bit of Spanish). No problem, I get in a taxi and hand my iPhone over to the driver who sees that I want to go to the opera house. Along the way he stops and I can here him talking on the radio. I pull up iTranslate and ask if he’s lost. He nods his head as he’s arguing with the person on the radio. I pull up Google Maps and him my iPhone again. He smiles and we’re back under way. I want to emphasize this point here: I was in Berlin for a matter of minutes and I’m able to ask a taxi driver if he’s lost, and then provide him with step by step directions.

Hey, what’s that building? Out comes the iPhone.
I wish my friends back home could see this now. Posts to Facebook.
I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me. Enters phrase in iTranslate.
How much is that in $US or US measurement. Enters amount in iConvert.
Etc…

I could go on and on with all the uses of the iPhone when traveling abroad, but the key point here is that iPhoneTrip allows you to actually use your iPhone for a very reasonable price. It’s also 100% seamless. You do nothing but replace the SIM and turn data roaming on (if it’s not already). Your iPhone will automagically connect to whatever available carrier there is in whatever country.

Keep in mind that you’re going to be using your iPhone constantly, especially if you’re doing a lot of walking around. You could charge your iPhone on most but not all trains and at most but not all hostels. I’d highly recommend getting some cheap external iPhone batteries. Look for the ones with high amperages. I bought 3 from Monoprice.com that are 2200mAh for about $14 and can completely charge by iPhone twice before needing recharging themselves. These also work well because they charge using the standard USB docking cable and can be connected to your iPhone while charging, thus charging both. That’s also where Motion Alarm comes in. I’m sleeping in hostels that are mostly dorm or ensuite style. With Motion Alarm, I can plug in my iPhone, external batteries, and MacBook Pro all with my iPhone on top. If someone moves any of it or my backpack, the alarm goes off on my iPhone. I still keep it all hidden on my bed between me and the wall.

iRail and HostelWorld apps are great for looking up specific travel information. To make things easier, I created a spreadsheet that lists all of my trains, cities, hostels, operas and other activities and then saved it in PDF form. At any time I can pull this up on my iPhone and see where/when I’m supposed to be someplace.

This is the coolest, most adventurous trip I’ve ever taken in my life. It’s amazing how much the iPhone adds to the experience and how iPhoneTrip enables the use through reasonable pricing.

If you’re interested in learning more about my Europera 2010 trip or having any questions, please follow me on Facebook at:
facebook.com/kevine

According to AppleInsider, “Restrictions drove U2 to switch sides from Apple to RIM“, Apple lost the sponsorship opportunity for U2 to RIM due to Apple not being willing to appease U2. I’m not that big of a fan of U2 (and forget the “but U2 sucks” comments), the fact is, U2 is HUGE. While artistically I think they ran out of substance a long time ago and are running high on gimmicks, they do get millions of people engaged in what they’re doing around the world.

From U2’s perspective, they want to be treated like the artistic Gods they think they are. They want *something*, anything that their status gives them exclusive access to, so they can seem cutting edge.

Apple, isn’t so accustomed to placating in this regard, and probably has the perspective that they’ve got all kinds of high priority partners to provide direct support and access to, such as Microsoft (Office for the iPhone), or Adobe (Flash).

Given the clash of corporate and brand protecting egotistical giants, I could see how there would be a conflict between U2 and Apple.

But this ultimately ends up hurting Apple.

U2 goes on and does something with RIM for the Blackberry, which will probably be something with less whiz-bang bells and whistles. However, Apple loses the promotional opportunity completely. Furthermore, Apple loses some of its edge as the media smartphone as opposed to just the smartphone. In other words, some people may see the Blackberry as just as hip, cool, and media savvy, but better for business use than the iPhone. The opposite of this of course would be Microsoft offering Office for the iPhone as an exclusive.

Of course all of this assumes that the article at AppleInsider is correct, and Apple lost U2 for reasons other than RIM simply just deciding this opportunity was worth pouring a boatload of cash into and simply outbidding Apple.

The bottom line though is that this is yet another example of how Apple needs to open up and play nicer with partners. Somehow though I can’t imagine Steve Jobs is spending his time off right now ripping up iU2 photos.

Related blogs:
Techmeme
Bono and Steve Jobs No Longer BFFs
Why is U2 endorsing the BlackBerry?

ThePhoneLounge has an article iPhone 3.0 isn’t all good… which focuses on in-app sales, which is a new feature in iPhone OS 3.0, expected to be released early this summer.

This is more than just allowing purchases to be made through a back-end system such as Amazon for example, this allows developers to provide upgrade functionality in their apps. This could be all kinds of things from upgrading from a lite version to a full version, buying additional maps for GPS apps for the iPhone, buying avatars or next levels for games, or subscription based services.

The fear here is that developers will nickel-and-dime users in an effort to constantly extract as much cash as possible instead of providing an upfront known price associated with the app.

And this is what I think:

1) Most developers have been really good about providing value for their apps. There are a lot of $1 apps. Even more so, there are apps which are very useful that are free because there’s a business model that doesn’t involve charging for the app. There have been many exceptions where people overcharge, but people usually price compare and competition is pretty high.

2) The ratings and rankings system will filter out abuse. People charging too much for their apps are given really bad reviews in the iTunes App Store. People can be brutal with their iTunes reviews. It’s almost as bad as Yelp.

In the end, most developers will be conscientious enough to be responsible to begin with, or will learn quickly that they must be reasonable with the in-app sales.

I guess we’ll find out soon.