Road trip with a smartphone

[dcsnomo]

A while back there was a thread about smartphones, I had just recently purchased the Samsung Epic 4g on Sprint. Well, took a road trip last week and put the phone through its paces...pretty amazing appliance, not sure why they call it a phone.

In the car it was doing all of this at once:
Phone calls, texts, emails
Playing music non stop on Pandora
Navigating the trip
Wireless hot spot for my wifes laptop so she could work in the car

The phone was great! I did buy a holder for the Trailblazer to get the phone up where I could see it. The battery never charged up fully with all that going on, but just left it plugged in. The wireless hot spot is great. My wife is an HR contractor, has to work every day. So rather than worry about wi-fi this and internet that we just paid the $30 per month for the hot-spot service (billed to the client!) and she had wireless access everywhere, 3g speed was fine. The only drop was on HWY 65 in Northern Indiana.

The phone was great while in New Orleans, taking pictures and videos, posting to Facebook, getting directions, checking web sites.

The only problem is battery life. The issue is that the phone is useful and a lot of fun, but if you use the fun/useful stuff while out and about the battery just doesn't hold up. So it would not replace a camera if you take a lot of pictures, and taking a video of a good band and posting it to Youtube is not something you will do more than once away from the good old wall outlet at the hotel.

But hey...toys keep us sane, this is truly a marvel of technology. It is now sitting next to me, hot spot going...and PLUGGED IN!

 

[ibendwire]

I currently have the htc evo from sprint and love it. How would you compare the speed of the regular internet with the speed from the wifi off of the phone. I am thinking of adding it on my phone. It is amazing all the stuff these smart phones can do. I am still finding new things it can do. As far as the battery I agree. They don't last, especially when you start using all the "fun" stuff. I am just getting into the habit of putting it on the charger when ever I am not using it.

 

[dcsnomo]

As long as there was a good signal the phone wi-fi speed was just fine. In our hotel room we had 2 laptops going, she was doing e-mails, I was using the internet and Pandora. No problem at all. The nice thing is that it is not a contractual purchase from Sprint, you can add and drop this service anytime and they will pro-rate the charges.

 

[rodehard]

I have an Iphone and needed a solution for European travel this summer. This was on a river cruise that boasted wi-fi. I thought I would get line2 by toktumi and avoid the high cost of international calling. My problem was that the wi-fi was slower than some of our old modem connections and did not support voice transmission speeds. I was only able to use it in the Charles DeGaulle airport. I resorted to laptop emails which sent 1 meg pictures in about 20 minutes each. Yawn.

 

[ibendwire]

As long as there was a good signal the phone wi-fi speed was just fine. In our hotel room we had 2 laptops going, she was doing e-mails, I was using the internet and Pandora. No problem at all. The nice thing is that it is not a contractual purchase from Sprint, you can add and drop this service anytime and they will pro-rate the charges.

Thanks for the info. I think I am going to add the wifi. Like you said, if I don't want it anymore I can just drop it.