One World, One Device - mobiles and modern travel

For five years straight I haven't left Vancouver, but 2006 was something else. The 7-months long Europe trip was what inspired me to get into mobile. This December, as I found myself flying over the Atlantic once more, I wondered - do I REALLY need to have my laptop with me? I carry it to school every day, but the risks of travelling with one might easily outweigh the benefits. I finally decided to leave the good old Medion at home and put all my hopes on the mobile phone, the trusty Samsung D900.

I got to the airport early. Really early, considering the flight was delayed by an hour. I walked around, had a coffee and still had three hours to kill. The phone rescued me for the first time, providing music, podcasts and games (and - oh yeah - the ability to PHONE people). The only problem was, this intensive multimedia usage reduced the battery life to just under two hours. I found a plug and continued listening. I was getting a lot of funny looks from laptop owners who saw me "charging up" - to many, a phone is still just a phone. Still, one device provided me with all the entertainment I needed.

 The plane flew overnight, so I picked sleeping over watching movies or listening to music. When we landed in London, everyone started turning on their mobiles to check for text messages. The D900 has a nice feature that dynamically changes the background based on the general area it's currently in - in a second or two I had Big Ben on my screen. It's not like I was in doubt of whether the plane made it to the correct airport, but it was a nice "welcome" nonetheless. Mobile devices can cause feelings even without the user interacting with someone else.

 Due to being a poor student, I couldn't afford a hotel and had to stay in the Heathrow airport to catch my outbound flight to Kiev in the morning. Of course the first thing on my mind was checking email and facebook (I only remembered about checking goSFU for final grades a few days later - sad, but typical for a 5th year student). The airport has several Internet kiosks, which are basically LCD screens with really tight metal keyboards. 15 minutes on those cost 2 pounds (4 CAD). I paid up and left unsatisfied - the keyboards are so tight, typing is as fast as using T9 on a cell phone... Conventional Internet isn't always cheap.

But wait! Yes, Fido has horrible data rates but it claims that using Internet overseas carries a premium of onlly 33% - 4 cents per kilobyte as opposed to 3. In his recent article, John talked about data compression in Opera mini. Could it be possible to take advantage of it? We'll see when I get my next bill, but in the meantime I could check my email for only 8 cents a pop (the GMail page ends up being 2k when compressed). Typing up one sentence responses is another 8 cents. I could keep in touch all night without spending a fortune at the Internet kiosks and I didn't even have to set anything up - roaming was seamless. Using mobile Internet doesn't have to be difficult

 After a sleepless night the battery was low once again, so I proceeded to charge it. I looked even more funny with a charger wire going straight into my jean pocket, but as a famous commercial says, "image is nothing". What wasn't funny at all, however, was the size of the charger. It had a "euro plug adapter" on as well as the "british plug adapter" and was probably three times the size of the phone. When is wireless charging going to go mainstream?

 I decided to take a short powernap. In about an hour, the phone's alarm rang and I was ready to go. This time the flight was in the morning, so I decided I could play a game or two while flying (setting the phone into "Offline Mode" so it wouldn't - god forbid - disrupt the plane with its radiation), while listening to music. The girl next to me took out an iPod nano from her Louis Vutton bag and fired up some beats as well. A few minutes later she started asking me why do I have a phone turned on and how I got all those games on it. Cool mobiles are good conversations starters. Even the N93, John!

 The second after we landed in Kiev, I've already had checked my email (I must be addicted). The network of Fido's roaming partner Kyivstar worked even faster than what I am used to in Canada... Developing countries sometimes have better infrastructure than we do. More on that in my next report from Eastern Europe =)

 IgoRskee