iPhone & iPad: 4-day Business Trip

I recently went to Toronto, Canada for a business trip and decided to not take my laptop. Instead, I was armed with two iOS devices, namely my iPhone and my iPad(wifi only). This was pretty risky to do even though I have replaced about sixty percent of the tasks I perform on my laptop with the iPad. Overall, the experience was pleasant but not without its challenges.

My first challenge was to purchase a voice and data plan for the iPhone since this was officially an international trip. I decided to get the $4.99 At&t Canada voice plan which will charge me $0.59 per minute for voice calls and $0.50 per text message sent. Incoming text messages were free.  I also purchased a 50 MB data plan not knowing exactly how much data I will actually consume. I don't track my data usage on a regular basis since I have unlimited data in the US. To track my data usage, I used both the iphone's built-in data usage tracker and also the At&t's MyWireless App.

On my trip, I spent about 12 hours away from my hotel each day for meetings. I made the assumption that I would have access to wifi at those meetings but access was locked down to only allow the employees to connect. That meant that the hotel was the only place I had free wifi access. I really had to watch my data usage now. After my first day of data usage through emails, Twitter, Foursquare, G-reader, and GV Mobile+ on the iPhone, I had consumed 11.4 MB of data. That was fine... I was was on track for four days with 48 MB and 2 MB to spare.

The hotel I stayed at was very interesting to say the least. It was the most unique hotel I had ever encountered with only 19 rooms and each of them also unique. So, on my second night I decided to take a video of my room and post it on Twitter. It was about a two-minute video. I didn't think twice about uploading it since I was at the hotel and the free wifi would kick in. Word to the wise...turn off data roaming. Because I had data roaming still on in my settings, even though wifi was available the uploading of the video decided to go through my data plan. That was the end of my data plan. I had not only sucked my plan dry but went over by a couple of MB. Needless to say, my data use was limited to the hotel for the next two days. I was lucky that those next two days were the weekend and no emergency emails for work needed a response.

Texting was in heavy use, but thanks to the GV Mobile+ app I did not have to pay for outgoing texts. The app is connected to my Google Voice account and there is no charge for texting there. I use this app at work also since I have no cellular signal, but can still receive text through wifi.

The iPad was in heavy use at the hotel, but not as much as I would have liked to. Apparently due to licensing issues all my go to video apps did not function in Canada. The three main ones are Hulu+, Netflix, and the ABC Player. I wish I knew this earlier so I could have planned accordingly. Well, at least I was able to rent from iTunes.

In the end, the trip went well and I learned some lessons. I take unlimited data use on my phone for granted. I now know to turn off data roaming in a foreign country when using wifi. My laptop is now a backup to my iOS devices instead of the other way around a few years ago. Even this post is completely written on my iPad.