This weekend I went camping at with my Venturing Crew at a remote Boy Scout campsite called Camp Masonite-Novarro in Mendocino, California. During this trip, I was reminded of a few things and learned a few more about my iPhone.
- AT&T doesn’t have coverage where I was camping. I understand that coverage is sparse in some areas because of the terrain. However, I was jealous to discover that other non-AT&T phones were able to get through. This was a little frustrating for me.
- iPhone Maps App depends on internet access. If it cannot connect to the internet, then your Maps App won’t even come up. I discovered this problem when waking up my iPhone. I don’t know if there is a way to overcome it. If there is, I would like to know. Maybe that will be an automatic update in the future.
- Related to #2. If an iPhone App depends on the internet, it will be practically useless in the wild.
- If you know you’re in a place without reception, switching to Airplane mode will help conserve your iPhone’s energy.
- The iPhone 3GS compass reports your GPS coordinates, on the bottom of the screen, while it displays your heading. I never really noticed it before until I looked a little bit closer.
- This last one isn’t something new but reminded me to always be aware of the speakers and microphone placement. I had set an alarm because I wanted to wake up at a specific time. I usually leave my phone on the nightstand, so the alarm always produces an audible sound without any problem. However, when you have your phone sitting in your gear and you want the alarm to sound, make sure you put the phone upside down so the speaker holes are facing out. If you forget the speaker placement the alarm will be muted.
