Thanks for reading along!

We’re rarely away from a power source – either our own trailer’s solar power or the vehicle – long enough to have come up with much of a solution. However, on the rare occasions we are, we carry aRichardSolo 1200 for iPhone / iPod – External battery pack. It’s enough to top off our batteries when they’re running low and we can get back to a charging source.

– Cherie

I greatly appreciate your reviews and this site!

What do you use to charge your iPhone?

I have the new iPod Touch 32GB and I’m looking to find something that will charge it when I don’t have access to a wall socket, computer or car. ‘Solio’ is often mentioned as an option but I’ve read complaints about it so I’m not sure how good it really is. Also, I live in Canada so I face crazy fees if I order Solio from the US. Canadian suppliers offer Solio, but don’t seem to have the doodads that I might like to buy to go with it. Seems like a costly and potentially risky way to go.
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The catch though is that the iPhone is locked to AT&T, so you will be paying AT&T’s international roaming rates. There are ways to unlock an iPhone so that it is no longer tied to AT&T (I used my original iPhone on T-Mobile), and then you will be able to use local SIM cards to get cheaper rates while traveling.

– Chris

I’m now on a Sprint (which I have excellent signal at home) Blackberry 8830.. and loving it. But I however certainly miss the touch screen.. I keep on doing all the old habits of touching the screen, and trying to do Alt-commands which translates to Shift key-CAPS on the blackberry… Dangit!!

I’m a semi-technomad and had been pleased with my Verizon coverage and service for years. When the BB Storm came out last year, I wanted so much to move to a full touchscreen smartphone– really liked their HW, but the OS and SW sucked! Endless keypresses and menus to do basic stuff that my aging, limping MotoQ could do faster. I figured I’d wait til the next iPhone release and see if VZN would come out with anything better in the meantime. They didn’t, so Apple/ATT, here I am!

One thing I will be doing though– staying with Verizon for their data plan. I had great coverage last year as I worked/camped from coast to coast via my tethered Q phone. This year, I had planned to get a Cradlepoint router, but now am leaning towards their nifty little MiFi device instead.

I think your and Cherie’s approach of leveraging two cell carriers rather than just one is absolutely the way to go when working on the road (not only for greater coverage options but the extra GBs of bandwidth too).

Happy trails!

p.s. If you and Cherie are still in the Midwest in mid-July, drop in at the International T@B Rally in the Quad Cities July 13-17. About 50 T@Bs will attend and Diane & Jill will be leading the entertainment, so it should be quite a time!

This is in part how I used to contrast the Palm OS with Windows Mobile. Pointing out just how badly suited Windows Mobile was for “mobile” use used to be one of the easiest parts of my job.

Personally, I’d be happy with a phone plan that included hardly any voice minutes. To me, my mobile exists to bring the internet to my pocket. I love love love having a great web browser and email always with me.

The iPhone has been a great game changer for the entire mobile industry, and I expect great things in the future as other device and platform makers start to rise to the challenge. Palm has managed to do so with the Pre, and Google’s Android is on the right track and is looking very promising for 2010.

Most of the other phone makers and platforms have been very slow to catch up though. Nokia for example has surprised me with how poorly they have evolved. The iPhone has been shipping for over two years, and yet Nokia’s newest flagship N97 disappoints in comparison.

– Chris

My first interactions with a smart phone was a Windows Mobile 5 device (HTC Apache, Verizon Branded) and I came to the follow conclusions after reading it: A smart phone is worthless as a phone due to bulky and ackward size, and incredible poor battery life, the applications developed for them are still tring to stick with a keyboard and multibutton mouse interaction philosphy making touch screen interaction completely klunky, and the existing application base is sorely lacking, leaving me with nothing but “outlook in my pocket”, and finally, wireless teleco providers and their plans are nothing but evil and horidly costly. Ever since, I’ve used a very basic phone for the basic function talking. For everything else I use a netbook (used to be an used, ultraportable about 5 years out of date for cost effectiveness).

I can honestly say, that the iPhone is truely a game changer that has completely blown away all of the above expectations. I don’t think I’ll ever get one as my current setup serves my personal need better, and I don’t care for some of Apples + AT&Ts business practices. Still, that G1 is pretty tempting.