(In this first of a series of travel essentials from our travel writers, Italy expert Donald Strachan explains his affinity with… his phone.)
There are times when you travel and want to stay connected, and times when you don’t. Or, at least, that’s what I hear… I haven’t done much of the second kind of travel lately, so my Nokia N95 is the first thing I pack.
It’s my voice recorder, digital notepad, and standby camera. It converts .doc and .pdf files to a screen-readable format. It’s an umbilical chord to the mobile Web, including my Twitter (via dabr.co.uk) and Evernote accounts. Tether it to my netbook via Nokia’s PC Suite and it’s a 0.5 Meg modem. It doesn’t have the app power of the iPhone, but the key ones (Gmail and Google Maps) are quick and unfussy, plus Nokia’s Ovi Store is getting there. Kinda.
All that activity eats data, which is where my N95 burns an Apple on a head-to-head. Running a locked, contract iPhone, I’d have spent over a grand in roaming charges during this last week in Italy. With an N95 plus a local Vodafone SIM, I’m at €7 and counting.
All that and it makes phone calls, too. Genius.
(A new addition to the Travel Intelligence stable of travel writers, Donald’s first piece was a cracking roundup of ten books to take to Tuscany. It’s well worth a read…)
Tags: Nokia N95, TI Tips, Travel Essentials, Travel Writers
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