Holiday to the US coming up - GPS advice please

[+Clipper.]

Hi all,

 

As someone very new to this hobby but enjoying it immensely, I am going to the US later this year, and fancy doing a bit of hunting while I am there.

I use the official app on my Iphone 3G at the moment, but am concerned about the potential data roaming costs.

 

Can I use the Iphone over there without connecting to the internet through 3g? (Where I am staying does have WiFi) Or, am I better off buying a handheld GPS for use over there, and leaving the phone at home?

[+NattyBooshka]

In network settings on the phone it is the default to have data roaming turned off... So yes, it's possible to not connect to mobile Internet. The new version of the app will store plenty of caches and maps. Even as a dedicated iPhone man, I'd say you're better off adding a GPSr to the kit... And you'll find caches easier and faster than with a 3G. If you don't need the phone in the US, leave it behind... Incoming calls can be worse than data charges!

Edited July 14, 2011 by NattyBooshka

[team tisri]

Hi all,

 

As someone very new to this hobby but enjoying it immensely, I am going to the US later this year, and fancy doing a bit of hunting while I am there.

I use the official app on my Iphone 3G at the moment, but am concerned about the potential data roaming costs.

 

Can I use the Iphone over there without connecting to the internet through 3g? (Where I am staying does have WiFi) Or, am I better off buying a handheld GPS for use over there, and leaving the phone at home?

 

What I do before I leave the country (and it's important you do it while your phone is still connected to a UK network) is divert all incoming calls to voicemail. Then if someone does call they get your voicemail and you don't get a bill. You've still got your phone there so you can choose to make calls if you need to (and of course you've got something to use in case of emergency).

 

If you divert calls when you are there then I believe some networks will end up charging you a huge fee. You pay the roaming portion to route the call from the source to the US, then you pay for a US-UK call to divert it to voicemail, so you're paying anything up to £2/minute or so for someone to talk to your voicemail. Then of course you pay again if you want to listen to it.

 

Beyond that I don't know how the iPhone app works so can't help you with the specifics of what it does.

[+NattyBooshka]

Thinking about it... put the iphone in airplane mode... then enable wifi. It is now an ipod touch, and cannot use mobile networks or make/receive calls, do this at home. When you get to the states, everything is fine, and location services will still work. When you get back to good old England its one setting to return your phone to normal.

[+Bear and Ragged]

If you want maps, look at Garmin GPS.

Free maps are available from http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/

[team tisri]

Thinking about it... put the iphone in airplane mode... then enable wifi. It is now an ipod touch, and cannot use mobile networks or make/receive calls, do this at home. When you get to the states, everything is fine, and location services will still work. When you get back to good old England its one setting to return your phone to normal.

 

The trouble with doing that is that if you do enable the phone to make an emergency phone call you could find that from there to the point you come home every single incoming call counts as an international call to where you are (where you pay the roaming) coupled with a call back to the UK (where you pay the cost of the call).

 

It's a bit more drawn out but I'd still opt for the divert approach.

[+NattyBooshka]

Thinking about it... put the iphone in airplane mode... then enable wifi. It is now an ipod touch, and cannot use mobile networks or make/receive calls, do this at home. When you get to the states, everything is fine, and location services will still work. When you get back to good old England its one setting to return your phone to normal.

 

The trouble with doing that is that if you do enable the phone to make an emergency phone call you could find that from there to the point you come home every single incoming call counts as an international call to where you are (where you pay the roaming) coupled with a call back to the UK (where you pay the cost of the call).

 

It's a bit more drawn out but I'd still opt for the divert approach.

Good point... I didn't think of that.

[+HazelS]

Don't even think about using the iphone for caching while you're away.... unless you're very rich!!!

 

Buy a cheap GPS, to be fair, you sound like you're really enjoying caching, so it's only a matter of time before you buy one anyway!!

[+firestars]

If you don't answer the call on holiday, then there is no charge as there is no connection.

 

So, you don't need to forward it to VM.

 

I have a Blackberry and simply turn off Data, to enable me to have a phone and a GPS

[team tisri]

If you don't answer the call on holiday, then there is no charge as there is no connection.

 

So, you don't need to forward it to VM.

 

I have a Blackberry and simply turn off Data, to enable me to have a phone and a GPS

 

That would depend on your network and how the phone was set up. Every phone I've ever had has defaulted to divert to voicemail after a certain time, so if the caller leaves the phone ringing for that length of time they get diverted.

 

You could turn off the diversion to voicemail as an alternative to setting everything to "divert all". It obviously depends on whether you'd rather people were able to leave you messages or not.

[+maiawalli]

We've just come back from a holiday to the US. We used our iPhones for all the caches we found. Simply turned off data roaming and downloaded the maps into the geocaching app before we went out hunting. We used free wifi networks to download the info.

If you do download maps etc it's hard on the battery and can be quite slow so plan ahead and download maps the night before so you can charge your phone overnight. We also had a car charger for topping up the charge on the move.

We did have our GPS with us as well with caches loaded onto it but it's basic and the iPhones were so much more convenient as we could read descriptions and clues out on the hunt.

We had a greattime on our travels and bumped into quite a few other cachers on our trip. Enjoy your vacation!

[+maiawalli]

Grrrrrr. Double post.

Edited July 16, 2011 by maiawalli