iPhone 5 on the Road

Last week, I was on the road and traveling for business. It gave me a good chance to try out the new iPhone on the road. I was headed to a meeting at a place I had not been to before and required travel via plane and car.  

One thing that hasn't changed about the iPhone is its ability to integrate into a variety of address books. In this case, I was using Google, so I made sure my destinations were already in the address book and synced to the device. I also downloaded the United App since that was the airline of choice for this Journey. I already had downloaded it once, but it was not currently synced to the phone.



That done, I accessed by boarding pass via the app and then added it to Passbook. I was then able to use it to board my various flights as they both had a connection so I was on and off planes 4 times this flight. However, I remain confused by Passbook. It seems to only keep upcoming items in it, but even that isn't entirely clear. Passbook doesn't seem to give you anything additional beyond having one place to group your stuff together and even that is tenuous since few apps seem to work with it.

I used the iPhone as my music player for the duration of both flights including making a few calls between flights and doing some light surfing. Speed varied all over the place on AT&T's network. At LAX, i was seeing a little less that 3Mb up and down. In Chicago, it was between 17 and 20 Mb down and 3 to 5 Mb up. In Cleveland, it was 13-14 Mb down and between 4-8 Mb up. Overall most of them felt very quick, even in L.A. By the time I arrived at my destination, I probably had about 60% battery left.

In the rental car, I used the turn by turn directions to direct me. The destination was in an area that I knew only in general so I really needed street level directions. The GPS seemed quite accurate for the area and gave directions in sufficient time to make the right lane changes, etc. One feature I missed that my car's nav unit has is to tell you which lanes to be in. While it verbally would say "and then stay left" or something similar, it's nice to have that visual cue.

After the meeting, I used it to get to my evening's accommodation. Again, no issues to report there. I did have trouble however the following day trying to use the search function to find a regional airport in the area. It couldn't find it in the search, but had previously. Clearly, there are still some bugs in the system but they seemed relatively minor.

I did have a chance to meet up with family on the trip and used the camera quite a bit. It did not disappoint with very fast photo taking and good results. I still had a few photos with smears or blurs but no more than usual when you have fast moving kids and pets in the mix. Afterward, I used the shared Photostream feature to share my photos with the family. That at least was easy enough that my 68 year old mother was able to set it up quickly enough and view the photos.

Overall, the phone held up as expected. No major issues with functionality, battery, etc. I think that just as the unit has matured and evolved overtime, it brings similar refinement to usage and ability. I would still like to find a more compelling use for Passbook and hope that the Navigation issues are continually polished.

Posted with Blogsy