International Travel With Your iPhone…

November 30, 2010 by 3 Comments
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I’ve been asked many times about the best way to travel abroad with an iPhone without being hit at the end of the month with a jaw-dropping bill. Probably the best way to do this is to jailbreak your iPhone so it is no longer locked to AT&T. An unlock iPhone will let you use prepaid SIM cards you can purchase from local carriers – some even with data plans – giving you the full benefits of your iPhone wherever you travel.

The catch here is that you need to be willing to jailbreak your iPhone and deal with life outside the “safetynet” of the Apple ecosystem. Though the risk of problems with jailbreaking is low and the benefits are real, I made the personal decision a long time ago not to jailbreak my iPhone. I have enough technical complexity in my life, and just didn’t want to deal with another device requiring special attention. The entire iPhone ecosystem has worked really well for me, and I’ve never felt limited by the standard capabilities offered by Apple – except, of course, for the phone being carrier locked.

So can those of us with un-jailbroken iphones still make use of them abroad? Absolutely!

Here is a quick guide to maximizing your iPhone outside of the US:

  1. Unless you have money to burn, turn off data roaming on your iPhone. This will prevent it from connecting to data network of the local carriers in the country you are in – and save you potentially thousands of dollars in data roaming charges.

    Just go into SETTINGS->GENERAL->NETWORK and make sure that Data Roaming is set to off:

    If you really want to be certain that you won’t be pulling data, you can also turn off the Cellular Data option above it.

  2. If you don’t already have an account, you now want to sign up for Skype. Go to www.skype.com and click on the Join Skype button:

    It will give you a basic form to fill out to get your FREE Skype account:

    Once you have your Skype account set up, just log in to the site and you’re ready for the next step.

  3. Next, you need to buy Skype credits. For pennies a minute, Skype will allow you to place calls to actual phone numbers – not just other Skype users. This ends up being a tiny fraction of what any carrier would normally charge.

    For a recent week long business trip I took to Minsk, I ordered $20 worth of credits. I ended up making about 3 hours worth of calls but burned through less than $10 in credits. Skype absolutely is the most cost effective way to call people globally.

  4. If you would also like people to be able to call you via Skype from a regular phone, you can order what they call an Online Number. You can pick numbers local to any of 25 countries. I have a United States based Online Number from New York City, so anyone that has called me from there only needed to pay local toll charges – even when I was in Belarus.

    It costs about $60 a year to have an Online Number. Go in to your account details on Skype, and you will see the option to sign up for it:

  5. The next step is making all of this available on your iPhone.


    With that all set up, you now need to install the Skype application on your iPhone. Just go to the App Store on your iPhone, search for Skype. Select the Skype application and click FREE to get it:

    The Skype application interface looks very similar to the standard phone interface on the iPhone and works in pretty much the same way:

So what’s the downside with this approach?

Skype requires that your iPhone be connected to the internet, and with Data Roaming disabled, that means you’ll need to be connected via a wireless hotspot. In most places you visit, there are many options available for this. Almost every hotel will have it available for guests, and many restaurants and coffee shops provide it for free. A useful resource for finding hotspots globally is a site called Hotspot Locations. You just need to choose a country and city, and it will give you a list of places there that offer wireless access. Make sure you pick several alternative locations in case certain ones are no longer available.

Another useful tip to keep in mind is that text messages can be sent and received even outside of hot spots. They will typically cost $.50-$1 per message, but can be a useful backup way of communicating when a hotspot isn’t available.

What I’ve outlined here is essentially what I use myself when traveling abroad. If any of you road warriors out there have other suggestions for world traveling iPhone users, just leave them in the comments.

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Is Android Really Ready For Primetime?…

August 4, 2010 by 4 Comments
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After spending over a week on my new Android phone (Samsung Captivate Galaxy S), I can’t help but wonder if the experience I’ve been having with it is typical for other Android phone users.

The Captivate has a lot going for it – a beautiful screen, fast processor, excellent video camera, and good battery life to name a few. It just seems to me that the software – Android 2.1 – isn’t really a serious production release. There seem to be so many things with it that simply don’t function well or reliably. And some of those things are pretty significant on a smartphone:

  • The device constantly loses the settings I’ve configured for my Exchange server email. It completely forgets that the account existed on the phone and prompts me to enter a new email account as if I were starting email for the first time. I had it happen at least 7 times before I simply gave up and stopped setting it up again.
  • During those times when it did remember the account, deleting emails would be problematic. I would select a set of emails and press Delete, but still see those ‘deleted’ emails sitting there even after the app said they were removed. Sometimes they would go away if I waited a bit. Sometimes I needed to exit out of mail and then return for them to be gone.
  • The unit often becomes unresponsive if any I/O is taking place, with the touch screen remaining frozen until it finishes what it is doing. There were several times when I thought the unit had crashed on me only to have it spring back to life 20 seconds later.
  • Getting the GPS in the unit to lock on to my position is a complete crap-shoot. Sometimes it connects right away while other times I need to try repeatedly to get it to work – with both experiences happening in the same location right outside my office.

Given my lack of familiarity with Android, my initial reaction was that I was doing something wrong that was causing these things to happen. But after doing a little research to try and figure things out, I’m not so sure. It seems that I am not the only person having problem like this. Whatever the causes, I find myself in a position where I have no confidence in the device.

I had even considered returning it to AT&T for a different smartphone.

What kept me from doing that, despite the problems I’ve been having, is that I can see some real promise in the platform. It absolutely doesn’t feel completely baked or debugged to me, but I can still see glimmers of ‘something powerful’ in the software that are making me stick with it – at least until the new 2.2 FROYO version is released.

Once it’s out, I’ll do a through review of the device, and compare it in detail to my experiences using the iPhone.

And I’ll decide then for myself what I’m going to do next.

At this point, I couldn’t recommend (this) Android phone to anyone if it were the only smartphone/portable computing device they wanted to carry. The reliability just isn’t there – at least for the things I’ve been trying to do with it. If you needed to choose something right now, I think the iPhone is still the way to go – assuming you can deal with being on AT&T.

If you can wait, the best option is to see how good the Android 2.2 released ends up being, and to make your decision then.

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Verizon Wireless Looking To Follow AT&T's Lead…

June 21, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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According to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, it appears that Verizon – like AT&T – may be getting ready to implement a tiered data plan of their own, eliminating their popular prix fixe unlimited data option in the process. If this ends up being the case, it would mean the two largest wireless providers in the US will both be working to discourage bandwidth consumption on their networks, something that could end up being a big drag on the development of mobile services and other non-phone mobile technologies.

The irony here is that both of these carriers were willing to sell unlimited data plans when they knew that the devices they were offering them on couldn’t really make use of it. Now that mobile devices have finally started to catch up, those plans are being eliminated. On top of that, as carriers continue their rollout of 4G/LTE networks (which theoretically can offer significantly higher speeds), folks will simply find themselves running over their usage limits more quickly and racking up whatever overage charges their carriers’ may assess (which can sometimes be frighteningly expensive).

What’s desperately needed in the wireless space is innovation. The structural monopolies enjoyed by incumbent carriers make it easier for them to cut out any meaningful competition that could impact their businesses. The status quo favors them, so any change in the fundamental structure of the market isn’t welcome. They understand that their businesses depend in large part on preserving these advantages, making them less then ideal agents of change in this space.

Ultimately, the real innovation needed here will, by it’s very nature, be disruptive. It will upsets the marketplace and redefine today’s accepted terms of business. Given the nature of how wireless spectrum is managed, innovation will also involve more than just new technologies and algorithms. It will require a reconsideration of the regulatory and licensing frameworks that currently govern the deployment of wireless infrastructure, and demand a fresh look at the way access to the airwaves is allocated. It may also require that a larger chunk of spectrum be allocated specifically in support of the development and deployment of more creative wireless data solutions. There is some incredible research being done in this area, but it needs a path to commercialization if it’s going to get the funding it needs to become viable.

We will never see the promised wireless revolution take hold if the only options available to consumers are congested networks or capped and overpriced plans.

Change urgently needs to happen.

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My iPhone 4 Is On It's Way…

June 20, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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After repeated attempts throughout the day last Tuesday, I finally lucked out around 6:30PM and was able to squeeze in an order for the new iPhone 4. The reward for that bit of luck was the email I received this morning telling me that my order has now shipped.

There’s a lot to like in this new generation of the iPhone, but I’m most excited about the sharper display (any help I can get for my fading eyesight) and the new HD video capabilities.

I’ll let you know what I think as soon as it arrives.

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Apple's WWDC'10 Keynote And AT&T…

June 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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I wanted to do a quick followup on my previous post regarding AT&T’s announced changes to their wireless plans.

blog-iphone4

While Apple certainly had a lot of good things to introduce at yesterday’s WWDC keynote, support for a new carrier wasn’t one of them. I can’t help but wonder what went on behind the scenes over the last 8 weeks (from the launch date of the iPad 3G) that made AT&T decide to change something so fundamental with it’s wireless data plan – and why they decided to make it effective the same day the iPhone 4 was introduced. It can’t help but feel something specific is responsible for the way this has played out.

Of course, sometimes coincidences are just what they seem, and that may be exactly what happened in this case. Whatever the reasons behind it, metered access has the potential to change usage habits in a way that may slow the development of some interesting mobile media initiatives. That would be unfortunate, and a real opportunity missed.

While I’ve discussed this only in terms of Apple’s mobile offerings, AT&T’s service changes have actually gone into effect for every smartphone/data device that they support on their network. RIM, WebOS and Android based devices are all impacted by this in the same way. With this broad an impact, market forces will definitely be at work here. And that means the success (or failure) of any metered access plan will ultimately be something the marketplace gets to decide.

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Making Sense Of AT&T's Shift To Metered Wireless…

June 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment
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att-logo-parentalBoth the iPhone and iPad are a big part of my digital life. To put it mildly, I was a bit upset when AT&T announced yesterday that – effective next week – they are doing away with their unlimited data plan options across all of their smartphones and devices.

From that point on, the closest option they will offer is what they call their ‘DataPro’ plan:

DataPro: Provides 2 gigabytes (GB) of data – for example, enough to send/receive 10,000 emails (no attachments), plus send/receive 1,500 emails with attachments, plus view 4,000 Web pages, plus post 500 photos to social media sites, plus watch 200 minutes of streaming video – for $25 per month. Should a customer exceed 2 GB during a billing cycle, they will receive an additional 1 GB of data for $10 for use in the cycle. Currently, 98% of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2 GB of data a month on average.

While 98% of AT&T smartphone users may actually use less that 2GB of data per month, I am sure that the percentage of iPhone users that fall in to that camp will be considerably smaller. Smaller still will be the number of new iPad users that can fit within that 2GB limit. The people crossing this threshold aren’t doing anything crazy. They are simply using the mobile web the way people expect to use it – doing normal things like:

  • listening to Pandora on the iPhone
  • downloading a digital version of Wired magazine (at 500MB per issue)
  • buying a movie before boarding a plane (at ~1.3GB per movie)
  • using any cloud storage application (like MobileMe)
  • sending emails with attached presentations or documents

There is nothing noble going on here with AT&T. They are simply trying to take away the promise of the iPhone and iPad under the guise of lowering prices and protecting their users from that “2% Club” of real data hogs. And while AT&T is going to grandfather anyone that already has an unlimited data plan (good for current iPhone users), this will effectively do away with the month to month nature of the iPad data plan. (If you stop paying that $30 each month for the unlimited 3G service, the only options available to you when you light it up again will be limited plans.)

The real question in my mind though is why is AT&T doing this now?

The easy, obvious answer is that they are trying to get a handle on the increasing load being placed on their network, and this is the best way to make that happen. While I have no doubt that this is part of the reason for AT&T’s move, I believe there is something else going on here.

Something big.

Steve Job’s went out of his way to highlight that Apple had worked with AT&T to offer two attractive month to month data plans, the main one being an unlimited plan at $29.95/mo. The iPad 3G has been shipping for less than 2 months, and now that plan is being killed. The only way I can see that happening is if AT&T was told that something else was being killed as well.

U.S. Exclusivity.

I’m guessing that AT&T agreed to those data plans contingent on remaining the sole carrier with the iPhone, and that they will be free to retool their pricing once that changes. Is it coincidence that he new plan takes effect this coming Monday -the same day that Apple’s WWDC 2010 begins? The same day Steve Jobs is expected to announce the next generation iPhone? And maybe some other type of phone or device?

Let’s see what happens.

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Walt Mossberg's iPhone 3G Review…

July 9, 2008 by Leave a Comment
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It’s no secret I’m a big fan of the current iPhone…

I made the switch to iPhone a year ago after being a longterm Blackberry user, and haven’t looked back at all. Well it’s almost time for the next iteration of the iPhone – the iPhone 3G – will go on sale this Friday at 8am.

If you’re a current iPhone owner, the big question is:

Do I need the new hardware, or is the free 2.0 software upgrade enough?…

Gadget geek that I am, I plan on upgrading my iPhone Friday morning when it comes out, and I’ll let you know what I think after I try it out.

Until then, take a look at what Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has to say:

This should be interesting…

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