Travels with iPhones

You know, we can talk until we’re blue in the face about the great Map application on the iPhone or our iPhone travel experiences, but when it comes to evaluating the iPhone’s value as a travel companion, where the rubber really meets the road is… well, where the rubber actually meets the road. In other words, the best way to discover just how useful the iPhone’s multiple capabilities are is to get behind the wheel of your car and, with the iPhone riding shotgun, head off to your final destination with only a vague idea of where you’re going and how to get there.

Reader Ray A. Monigold — a.k.a That Ray Guy — has discovered the joys of traveling the iPhone way. And he wrote in to share with us the tale of his 5,000-mile road trip with just a full tank of gas, a brother-in-law, and an Apple mobile device.

Ray’s words follow after the jump.

So here's Ray's tale:

Using only my new iPhone, I just completed a 5,000-mile unexpected trip with my brother-in-law, driving from Seattle to Upper Michigan and back in just over five days. We were delayed in Detroit for a little over a half day.

 With no time for preparation (I was called at 5:00 p.m. on Friday and we left at 8:00 a.m. the next day), the iPhone was put to the test. It became our map, Internet connection, the way we sent pictures back to the family for fun and confirmations of our condition (eat your veggies), a phone (of course) and entertainment (music and Cars). We kept up with the news in places where the radio was not picking up. Texting became more reliable than voice for many reasons. (The messages sent and returned as we entered reception areas without having to press a resend key.)

I developed the "Starbucks" method of plotting a course. I searched and found a Starbucks at each of our major intersections, bookmarked them and then "plotted a course" from one bookmark to the next. The bread-crumb trail also led us back home. We found fuel, truck-stops for showers and tire repair facilities without a hitch.

The trip was needed to pick up a like-new 5th wheel trailer -- that had been found at an outrageous discount -- to haul behind a nearly-new Dodge 3500 Mega Cab Dually that my in-laws will use to travel the U.S. next year with their two daughters for an educational visit to every one of the lower 48 states.

We also used the Internet connectivity to compare pictures and pricing while under way and the sellers sent us e-mail photo attachments of the rig as we requested.

The EDGE network was a tad slow at times, but always worked! I learned a bit about page caching on the phone and came up with ways to "store" some data for "off edge" times.

Thank you, iPhone! And thanks to all the iPhone bloggers for all the lessons I learned while waiting for the money to buy my phone. I am just under the time limit for a $200 rebate but I don’t care! I was an early adopter and am proud of it!

The more people who have iPhones, the better the iPhone software updates will become! We, the early users who helped blaze that trail, made that possible for the rest to come -- Be proud!

Thanks for sharing your story, Ray.

Category: Reader Experiences

Posted by Philip Michaels on Sep 13 2007, 7:14 PM ET

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