Bonjour! Hello from the French Alps, where I’m doing a bit of ‘end of season’ skiing (quite badly). I’ve bought the usual array of hardware with me and a couple of normob friends have added a Blackberry, bog-standard SonyEricsson, Motorola PEBL and a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone between them. This is our mobile (holi)day:
Leave the house: I’m getting a lift to the airport, but my friend’s TomTom Sat Nav is being slow to get a signal so I check the journey duration on Google Maps; we have just enough time. During the journey as the conversation lulls (it’s 4am by now and neither of us are feeling chatty) I try the location sensing service on the iPhone and even at speed it’s uncannily accurate. I find myself using it much more frequently than I thought – in this case it’s just to check the remaining journey time (we’re dropping the car off at another friend’s house and getting a taxi to the terminal – a brilliant plan for free parking except that we need to be there before the taxi driver to prevent an unrequired wake-up call for our parking host!) but it’s also saved me from getting lost on a few occasions recently.
Gatwick airport: I’m always pleased to get through security unscathed (the chap on the x-ray machine looks twice at my bag, but there’s no extra search). I’ve learnt to divide my electronics evenly between a few trays and it seems to draw less attention… Having checked (thoroughly) that there wasn’t much that needed buying in the duty-free electronic shop, my iPhone automatically jumps onto a Cloud hotspot and I look up some last-minute details – I wish every handset’s connection switching was this seamless. Previously I’ve also used this time before a flight to download new music to keep me entertained, but I’m well stocked with podcasts for now so there’s no need on this occasion. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more tie-ups with hotspot providers and the iPhone networks internationally. I would never have considered a hotspot subscription previously, but having had it for ‘free’ I can really see the benefit now and would subscribe in future.
As we wait normob friend #1 taps enthusiastically at his Blackberry. The device is barely 2 months old, but he’s well addicted. He travels a lot and wanted to stay more up-to-date with his e-mail, but I fear it’s an opportunity wasted as he doesn’t use the phone, contacts or calendar functions. I’d talked him through getting a hosted Exchange server and an E61i, but the T-Mobile lady did a sales job and he came away convinced anything other than a Blackberry would be too hard. Perhaps it’s true but it pains me to see the device so under-utilised.
On the plane: Disaster! No mobile devices to be switched on… even in flight mode. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this, but this is part of the safety briefing script so sounds like it’s a regular feature. No music for me. I get the laptop out to kill the time and wonder what the airline hopes to achieve by this. It seems too inconsistent – I don’t have one, but my laptop could easily contain a 3G card or even have it built-in yet I’m allowed to use it. On landing phones are beeping and chirping long before we’ve taxied in to the stand or the engines are stopped, but the crew (bar scowling at us) don’t say anything. If ever you wanted a clear demonstration of how universal mobile ownership is watch people leave an aircraft.
Collecting the baggage: It dawns on me – for the first time in a while I am without any mobile data. 3 don’t have a network in France so I can’t benefit from using my x-series inclusive data (via ‘Three like home‘ as I do in Ireland) and this airport doesn’t have any WiFi. I double check all my roaming data is switched off on the E61 and the iPhone – I can’t justify the pounds per megabyte 3 (£3) and O2 (£7) want. Normob friend #1 is tapping away at his Blackberry again. I ask him what the roaming costs are – is it inclusive? He has no idea…
On the bus: We have a 3 hour transfer… It’s too tight in here for the laptop and Google Reader doesn’t yet have a version of Gears for Symbian or iPhone so I’m pretty fed up. I’m also unable to settle an argument about whether the other airport we were offered is closer as Google Maps won’t identify its location without data switched on (it seems) and predictably there’s no mapping of France cached so it would be an expensive download. I find myself becoming irritable about not being able to use my devices and worry if this is really a good thing. All I can think of for the next hour is that I’m going ‘cold turkey‘ and it’s not pleasant.
At the apartment: More disaster! They don’t have WiFi as promised (yes, I checked before booking)… it’s only in a nearby bar. Shame – I had Truphone setup on the E61 and was looking forward to keeping in touch with the other half using this cost-effective way. I toy with the idea of getting a French SIM for mobile data, but a quick examination of the local airwaves shows no 3G networks at all so it feels pointless. I consider getting the ski lift to the top of the mountain and making a dash for the Italian border which is barely miles away and where there’s a Three network, but it’s the important weekend of the 6 Nations Rugby so we set off on a search to find a bar showing the games instead. I’m impressed with my 2 normob friends though – in the time it’s taken me to check us in they know which networks are available and where there is (and more frequently isn’t) WiFi…
I top up the various phones using the excellent Proporta USB charger. I haven’t brought any power leads other than for my laptop – the multi-headed adaptor with the Proporta covers all my devices and the battery will probably last the week. This is a big improvement – even from the iGo system I used to have – with its many cables, plug adaptors and transformer which required a travel bag all of its own. This new charger from Nokia is similar and possibly a bit more robust, but the Proporta’s multiple connectors win it for me.
In the bar: No-one can remember the order the 3 games are due to be played in this afternoon – back to the mobiles and the BBC Sport website. GPRS seems unreliable for all the networks we try – we have 1 T-Mobile, 3 Vodafone, 1 O2 and 2 Three handsets with us… The T-Mobile Blackberry gets there first and we settle in for an afternoon hoping English pride can be restored against the Irish. I glance at the E61 from time-to-time and it’s having a really hard time, jumping between networks… still searching for that non-existent 3G signal. It seems to be struggling the most of all the handsets.
Skiing: We all decided to take handsets with us. I swap my main Three SIM out of the E61 and into a Skypephone. I’ve no intention of using the Skype features (I can’t – it doesn’t work on roaming other than on Three’s networks) but it’s a great-sized handset with a decent camera for pictures on the slopes and USB charging means no proprietary adaptor is required. Also at £50 I won’t be too distressed if it’s damaged. The iPhone stays in the apartment – it’s the best phone of all the ones we have with us to use in the glare of the snow with its excellent screen, but I worry about falling on it and the touch interface doesn’t work with gloves on.
During the day I’m further surprised by the normob friends – picture messages are being sent to friends at home and the Walkman phone provides some music when we stop for a break. Once again I’m reminded how useful Spinvox is as I’m able to review my voicemails without incurring any call costs back to the UK. None of them need an immediate reply so I can get on with my holiday – brilliant!
I’m considering if my definition of normob needs to be redefined, but when normob friend #2 takes a picture and the SonyEricsson offers a ‘blog this’ option he wonders aloud what the point of that would be and I feel the balance restored. It’s also notable that neither of them use any features on their phones other than the built-in ones – it’s something I take for granted.
When we get back to the apartment, normob friend #2 connects his Archos video player to the TV – none of us are a big fan of French TV. I’m frustrated that I have a similar amount of video on my iPhone, but it doesn’t yet provide video out as regular iPods do [update: It does – how behind the times am I??? Shame Apple wants £70 for a Universal dock and AV cables though…]. It would have also been cool to watch some of the video clips we’ve taken during the day on our phones – it’s the first time I’ve appreciated the value of the N95’s capability to do this. This new ‘video over USB / WiFi’ technology seems like the next logical step for this – I hope Nokia adopt it across the range.
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Overall it’s been strange moving back to a basic device. I just can’t do T9 anymore – I’m out of practice – and it’s been good to see my friends reaching for mobile services routinely at times I never would have expected them to. I worry that we’re in for an unpleasant surprise when the Blackberry bill comes in, but I think this demonstrates that people aren’t well informed about roaming data… perhaps I’m a little closer to understanding those thousand dollar iPhone roaming data bills when they were first released.
On the wish-list for me is definitely a better camera on a handset. The Skypephone’s 2MP is good enough resolution-wise, but the images are often fuzzy or poorly exposed… Also, as it’s not a smart-phone there’s little I could do with them except sync them to my laptop (via OS X’s excellent bluetooth utility which I discovered when I realised I’d brought a faulty USB cable). I really want to stick a few on Facebook so Shozu would do an excellent job here. However, some reasonably priced roaming data would also be called for… I hope Maxroam or a similar service offers this soon – they don’t yet.