Staying Blissfully Connected in Hawaii

Last time I went back home was six years ago in a little adventure I documented on my personal blog in accordance with the title “Hawaii Ink“. I didn’t quite repeat that experience nevertheless I did revisit an Internet cafe and post a video of myself eating shave ice. Big change this time was I had an iPhone, which made staying connected a whole lot easier.

Again, my wife stayed home this trip. Main means of communication between us stayed the same: phone and email. I did have Wi-Fi where I stayed, so Facetime was an option however my wife is usually camera-shy at any rate.

Six years ago, I shot and posted a video of myself enjoying shave ice, an island treat of finely shaved ice and flavored syrup. I shot that on a point-and-shoot camera, went home to download and process it on my Windows XP Tablet PC, and at the time uploaded it during I did other things. I didn’t time the whole process, nevertheless it took a during.

I did it again this trip, however this time the process took minutes, all on the same device. Shot the video from my iPhone 4, processed it in iMovie, and uploaded it to YouTube over 3G, almost in every respect on the go. I word for word assembled it outside at a picnic table during waiting for my brother to show up. Even my Windows 7 Tablet PC today cannot do all of that with such ease.

Normally I sync my iPhone to my media PC at home using Wi-Fi sync. Works great for my normal routine, however being thousands of miles from home is not part of my normal routine. In other words than switch my backup destination to my Tablet PC or go without my daily backup, I gave iCloud a shot.

As Josh has repeatedly reported, iCloud backup can cost you some bucks if you use multiple iOS devices and/or have a lot of data to backup. Nevertheless, with only the one iPhone, the 5 GB freebie storage proved more than adequate, especially because I had cleared my camera roll ahead of the trip.

The flight time to Hawaii from Virginia is about 13 hours not counting stopovers. Should the contingency arise, I had no set schedule to allow for regular recharging. Obviously I’d need a battery backup solution if I intended to use my iPhone extensively while the trip. As it happens, I had just picked up a new one to try out.

Solio Bolt solar charger

I purchased a Solio Bolt solar charger and battery pack for another project a few days earlier deciding on the trip. It has a 1 amp output option exactly intended for the iPhone and easily doubles the iPhone’s runtime with 2,000 mAh capacity. It is a happy coincidence that I could test its solar charging during in sunny Hawaii. It in effect saved me from any worries over making any charging pitstops.

Backing up the backup was a Griffin TuneJuice, which I before purchased as my primary backup solution. I chose it because I don’t for the most part need a backup battery and this works on an as needed basis using standard AA batteries. It came in handy on the flight from LAX to HNL when I ran down both my iPhone battery and the Solio by playing Angry Birds afterwards reading digital comics during listening to music. Brought my battery out of the red for when I called my mom afterwards landing.

The rest of the trip

The rest of the trip, I carried the Solio in my pocket to charge as needed, in substance giving me a power outlet in my pocket. I was not inconvenienced by the need to charge my phone once.

The final bit of tech I had to consider was headphones. I have Motorola Bluetooth stereo headphones, an Apple Bluetooth headset, and the standard iPhone headphones to choose from. I went with the latter two. I skipped the Motorola set because it would have been one more thing to charge. I don’t as a rule carry my Apple BT headset except when I expect to have to be in contact with people. That was undoubtedly the case on this family visit with fluid scheduling. The standard headphones were used for listening to music on the plane and as well on the beach. More on that in my other post on the joy of voice control.

Six years ago, when I made my trip home into a tech adventure, my use of mobile research was clumsy and obtrusive. This time, it was effortless and invisible. I didn’t have to do anything afterwards initial setup to share photos with my wife. Tech tasks like posting video was accomplished while spare minutes. Backup happened automatically overnight to the ever-present cloud. Charging and recharging were never a worry.

As Warner keeps pointing out, a big plus of mobile computing is simplicity. We are however definitely on a quest on that front, especially with natural interfaces like voice control, nevertheless the strides we’ve made in these past few years, driven in no small part by Apple, are in fact amazing.