[pct-l] Phone help

[Peter Shaw]

Carol and Mark,

Picking the "best" phone for a thru hike is going to be a challenge that is
beset by technology jargon, rapidly changing capabilities, a diverse set of
opinions, intricate cost plans and complicated perhaps further by your
international requirements. My first recommendation is go read Gadget's
Guide that you can find on www.postholer.com. Although it is now nearly two
years old, most of what he discusses is still relevant today. I did a lot of
research early in 2009 in preparation for my thru hike and I can tell it is
not easy given the array of smart phones on the market and the obtuse
selling contracts. My second recommendation is to figure what is really
important to you in terms of capabilities as everything will be a
compromise. You will get lots of opinions and I can only give you the
benefit of my experience in 2009.

I wanted the same set of capabilities as you plus a camera and an mp3
player. I bought a Blackberry 9000 and a two year plan with AT&T. Both AT&T
and Verizon have similar coverage along the trail and are significantly
better than Sprint or T-Mobile from the discussions I had with fellow hikers
(look at the coverage for all the carriers on Halfmile's web site). The
Blackberry 9000 is a quad band phone and works fine in the UK - I used it
there in October 2009. But when you buy it through AT&T it comes locked and
it is a pain to persuade AT&T to unlock it for you although they will do it
if you tell them you want to use it overseas. I picked the Blackberry
primarily because I was familiar with it from my corporate life and I ran
out of time to learn a new system. But the iPhone seemed to be just as good
based on discussion with one of my fellow hikers. 

The problem I see you have is that if you only need it for six months you
won't get the usual phone deal (I have seen them free since I got back as
long as you sign a two-year contract). The plans run about $70 - $80 per
month for talk minutes and unlimited data so two years will come close to
costing you $2000. The phones can be bought without a contract for about
$500 - $700 and they can come unlocked so you can pick a carrier. But
beware, if you get a cheap "pay-as-you-go" sim card, you will need to
confirm with the carrier that the coverage is not restricted and you can
still get data capability. Also check on international rates as they can be
a source of gouging you for more money.

If you get a phone with wifi, then there are lots of places that provide
free access - libraries, many hotels, and many of the small resorts that
you'll use for resupply. I provided Halfmile with an update of all the wifi
hotspots I found along the trail. Interestingly, there were a number of
places I got good wifi where there wasn't a cell signal to be found. But I
also found many places where I got enough of a cell signal to send a text
message and sometimes make a call along remote ridge tops where I wondered
where the signal could possibly be coming from. It was rather hit and miss
but it wasn't a lot of power to turn it on briefly just to see if there was
a signal.

If you want GPS, then it gets really complicated. Gadget discusses the issue
of GPS aiding. You have to get a phone that has a standalone GPS chip and
doesn't require the cell signal to help locate itself. But once you get past
that, there is another issue of what to do with the GPS information if you
are trying to geolocate yourself on a map. The Blackberry has an app called
GPS tracker that will give you location in lat/long deg.deg, e.g., 54.67432
deg N. The problem with these lat/long coordinates is that all the maps I
could find either had no coordinates (the guide books for example) or used
UTM coordinates (Halfmile's maps, the PCT Atlas, etc). UTM is much easier
for navigation which is why the maps use these coordinates. The conversion
from lat/long to UTM is not a simple piece of mental arithmetic and I
couldn't find an app that would display my location in UTM coordinates. I
was told the iPhone does have such an app, but you will have to research
that. I looked into downloading maps into the phone but that seemed very
complicated and then I would have to use the small screen for maps. My
solution was to get Topo and make my own maps which I customized to lat/long
deg.deg coordinates and made the trail much clearer for my aging eyes to see
with a bolder blue line. But this is expensive as well since Topo is about
$100 per state and then you have the color printing costs that have been a
recent topic of discussion on this forum. A standalone GPS unit might be a
better solution as it comes with all the maps and you can pick any of the
standard coordinate formats, but then you have the extra weight and more
power management to worry about. It's a pity that SPOT doesn't display its
location as well as transmitting it; then you would have a helpful multi-use
device. With my approach, I found the GPS a useful device for occasionally
confirming I was on the right path, but based on experience of doing the
trail, I would not put it in the essential category.

Power management is another challenge you will need to think about. You
should make sure the phone can easily turn off all the radios and the GPS as
these are power hogs. I just turned them on individually when I needed to
use them to save power. I started off with a solar charger on the top of my
pack, but this turned out to be totally worthless and after the first week I
carried the AC charger. Before hitting the Sierras, I also got a second
battery, although you can get extended hour batteries for some phones. With
two batteries and careful power management, I got the phone to last a week
or more. The biggest usage I got from it was writing my journal and the
display was probably the biggest power user.

I wanted the phone to also be my camera and was willing to accept its
limitations. It was only one megapixel, but the pictures came out OK and
look pretty good on my big screen TV. They were small enough files to
transmit, although I found sending them one per email was more successful.
With AT&T, if the level of service dropped from "3g" to "EDGE" or further
down to "edge" or even to "GPRS" (on the Blackberry, you could see the phone
searching for the best level of service as it scanned through these various
capabilities) then big attachments, i.e., multiple pictures, wouldn't go
through and the system timed-out. Very frustrating when you leave it on for
an hour or more, use up most of the battery and the transmission fails.  

If journal entries is your main use of your smartphone, then make sure you
like the keyboard. There are lots of options out there and they are all
personal preference. I was already quite "thumb-dexterous" on the full
qwerty keyboard of the Blackberry and I managed to write some lengthy
journal entries most days. I did not like using the typing aids that use the
number pad and suggest the word as you type more letters - again a personal
preference. If I did this hike again, I would probably buy and download Word
for the phone and write the journals with a word processor rather than as
e-mails. At Kennedy Meadows, the Internet Café runs on a wifi system but
because there is a limited bandwidth, he does not allow smartphones to
connect. But if you can take the memory card out and plug it into his
laptops to download the Word journals, then you can send them out on the
Internet (I couldn't find a way of moving my emails onto the memory card and
wasn't prepared to retype them all). 

I had an 8 GB removable memory card and all the pictures used only a small
fraction of it. Before I left, I obtained a lot of audio books and converted
them to mp3 format and put over 7 GB of books on the card. Again a personal
experience, but I managed to listen to one chapter of one book throughout
the whole trip. There simply wasn't that much down time to relax and listen
to a book. So I wouldn't put an mp3 player high on my list again.

I hope this is useful and doesn't deter you. You have some time to do the
research and get some expert advice. If you find a system that is
affordable, meets your basic needs and that you both like, then it will be
very worthwhile.

Good luck

Peanut Eater


-----Original Message-----
From: pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net [mailto:pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net]
On Behalf Of Mark England
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 1:26 AM
To: pct-l at backcountry.net
Subject: [pct-l] Phone help


Hi there 2 newly weds starting a thru hike on april 15th. Being from England
we are going to buy a phone in America when we arrive.

We are looking for Gps, text, calls and ability to update our blog while on
our hike. Any reccommendations or
other advice would be great.

Thank you

Carol and Mark 		 	   		  
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