iPhone4 as a travel tool, esp camera

I've been using my new iPhone4 while being a tourist in Rio de Janiero for the last few days. I'll be presenting at a conference following my stay here so I have brought my laptop so I have not been totally dependent on the device, but I've tried to give it a pretty good workout.

As a phone
I went with ATT's service when buying the phone since Verizon's phone will not roam in other countries. But when I discovered the per minute rate from Brazil to the US is about three bucks, I didn't even bother to sign up. I suppose in an emergency situation the roaming would be good to have, but I didn't even want to accidentally use this feature. I guess roaming data services have really provided some nasty surprises to travelers as well.

But the iPhone Skypes just fine if you have a wi-fi connection which even my two star hotel has here (mostly). For those daily calls home, the iPhone is great.

As a GPS
One of the primary reasons I brought the phone is that I've become a GPS junkie. Since I don't have a roaming data connection, GoogleMaps or Mapquest don't work with the GPS, but I downloaded a couple city maps of Rio and these work pretty well. I usually seem to be within about 100 yards of the little blue dot on the map so at least I can tell if I am walking in the right direction. Fun to watch while riding a bus too. I'm still hugging my print maps, however, and I've not tried to geo-tag any photos.

As an e-book reader
Surprisingly, I find reading the Kindle app on the iPhone better than I'd hoped, especially during the multitude of short waits that seem to always crop up during travel. I would NOT take the iPhone as my only source of reading material, though.

E-mail, web-browser, etc.
The iPhone is great for deleting e-mail messages, RSS feeds and other stuff you should be ignoring on vacation anyway. For e-mails that demand quick responses it works fine as well. Depending on the website, the phone is good for finding information on the web. I stored a number of documents in Evernote and these have been useful on the iPhone.

As a camera
This has been a real experiment for me - traveling without a "real" camera. And I would say it is a mixed bag. It's nice not to have to carry a separate device and at 5 megapixels, the iPhone camera is pretty good. The camera's controls, however, take some getting used to. Among the downsides:

• Not being able to see the screen in bright light (no rangefinder). Big drawback for me.
• No optical zoom. You can bring up a zoom slidebar which may or may not respond to sweaty fingers, but since it is digital, one may as well shoot and then crop.
• I find it tough to hold steady without your finger over the lens! I seem to have more blurry shots with the iPhone than with my regular camera.
• It's hard for strangers to operate so they can take your pictures. I tend to choose people who don't look like they can run too fast so maybe that's a part of the problem.
• No quick shots. Even if you leave the camera app open, you still have to turn the iPhone on and swiped to unlock the device (see sweaty fingers comment above). It takes only a couple seconds to do this, but a couple seconds often means getting the shot or not.
• I worry constantly about battery-life, unlike with a real camera for which you can tote an extra battery, memory card etc. I think limits the shots I take.
• It's not a device for recreational activities like the beach, hiking etc. I've dropped cameras in water before and I hate to think of this expensive device winding up waterlogged. I just don't know how rugged my new toy is. I've already acquired a few scratches on the case.

That being said, the quality of the pictures is pretty good, they upload into iPhone nicely, and the auto-correct usually brightens the dim ones right up. Here are a few shots from my trip:

 

Favela (slum) overlooking Leblon area. Taken from moving jeep.

 

View from Cordoba (Christ the Reemer) mountain.

Street art in Ipanema? Note big finger in lower right.

Painting from Museo Nacional de Belas Artes (no flash, por favor)

Sand art on Copacabana beach.

Harbor at Angra Dos Rios (Bay of Kings)

One thing the guide books don't tell you is that all tour guides are required to sing The Girl from Impanema at least once during the tour - usually rather badly. Just so you know.

Comments

[Nikki Robertson]

I knew you would love your new iPhone4! Thank you for sharing pictures of your adventure in Rio so that I can live vicariously through you!

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Nikki,

You are most welcome.

Doug