In my quest to pack ultra-light for my UK trip, I debated whether to bring my iPhone, since I didn’t really plan to pay AT&T’s high roaming rates. Ultimately, I brought it because I figured I could find enough Wifi hotspots to use the data features even if I made no calls.
Lesson learned: I’m always bringing my iPhone in the future! Although I did make a couple of calls on Mother’s Day ($1/minute) and send a couple of text messages (50 cents each), and I did find a number of Wifi hotspots (often free), I also:
- Took pictures, a couple of which I sent in real time to Tonia
- Used it as an alarm clock when sleeping in hotels that didn’t provide one
- On my laptop in Wifi zones, looked up stuff on the Web (walking maps, etc.) and sent it to the iPhone (via email) once I had the exact map(s) I wanted
- used it as an iPod
- downloaded podcasts of walking tours of Edinburgh, and transferred them to my iPhone
On this trip I had my laptop since it was for business. What would be great is if the downloading of generic MP3’s (not from ITMS) worked seamlessly on the iPhone without requiring syncing. I’m sure it can’t be far off.
Bottom line: always take your iPhone. Kick ass.