I recently (June, 2010) took an iPhone on a 1 month, 1000 mile tour up the Atlantic Coast from Charleston, SC to Lambertville, NJ. I used the iPhone many times a day, both on and off the bike. I sent and received email, made daily notes, determined my location, tracked my tour, found nearby services, surfed the internet, took photos, listened to books and music, read the NY Times, searched for Warm Showers hosts, and played a few games.

Overall, I found the iPhone to be a valuable bike touring tool. But, while its benefits far outweigh its shortcomings, there are things both it and some of its applications could do better.

The iPhone and Biking Gloves

I wear full fingered biking gloves when I ride. I took and used two different brands of gloves on this tour. The iPhone's interface has to be manipulated by direct touch. This combination caused no little bother as a meaningful percentage of the time, the iPhone wouldn't respond when I touched its screen with a gloved finger. One pair of gloves, the well-worn Pearl Izumis, worked well, until I hand washed them one evening, leaving them invisible to the iPhone for a few days. The other pair I carried, made by Fox, worked poorly and often had to be removed before I could use the iPhone.

The iPhone never worked as well when I was wearing gloves as when I was barehanded. When I could manipulate the iPhone wearing gloves, it was generally acceptable, though often frustrating as the iPhone would either incorrectly interpret my selection or not register it at all. Using the iPhone was much less attractive when I had to remove a tight fitting biking glove in order to communicate with it.

I don't think this wouldn't be a problem for someone who didn't wear gloves or used half-fingered ones, but was something I was always aware of while riding my bike and trying to use the iPhone.

Keeping the phone charged

Clearly, the iPhone, or any electronic device, is only useful if it has power. I didn't carry an extra battery, my iPhone never ran out of power and I was always able to charge it when I needed to. However, I was biking through an inhabited area and passed through several towns, both large and small, every day. I spent most nights with access to electricity, either in motels or people's homes. And, I often ate lunch at a restaurants, where the owners let me plug in for a mid-day charge. If you were in a remote area, camped every night and avoided restaurants, you might have to meaningfully limit your use of the iPhone or face some difficulty keeping your phone's battery charged.

In order to conserve power, I turned Wi-Fi mode off. I found that I could listen to the iPhone all day on the bike, access email throughout the day, check my location and track my position several times, take and email a few photos and still have plenty of power to use in the evening after I stopped riding. But, I always had to charge my phone each day or overnight. On the nights I camped, I had to plug the iPhone in early the next day or risk running out of power.

Listening to music or an audio book all day (7 hours, say) and occasionally using other apps would take the iPhone power to below half as long as I didn't make long phone calls and kept the Wi-Fi turned off. I never ran out of power but was often down to 20% by the end of the day.

3G versus E

Whenever I use my iPhone where I live (San Francisco), I see a 3G at the top indicating the network access I have. I assumed that it was either that or nothing.

However, on this trip, I discovered another icon, the dreaded E, which appears to mean Edge. What it actually means is Extremely slow. Whenever my network access was set to E, the wait times for pages was unbearably slow. Doing anything on the iPhone requiring more than one or two page loads was not worth the trouble. There was no way I would try to find a route or do most anything else with E access, though it would eventually load and send emails.

I didn't keep track of the percentage of time when I had 3G access versus E versus none at all. Most of the time when I was in cities or large towns, it was 3G. During the day on deserted sections, none at all was likely. I don't know if there is a way to determine network speed in advance. I can only say that without 3G coverage, the iPhone becomes a lot less useful.

Tracking my Tour

One iPhone app I was anxious to try was Track My Tour. This app uses Google Maps to plot tour waypoints that you submit. The website maps consists of straight lines drawn between these points. Here is the track I created.

The app was easy to use and it worked as I thought it would. Each point you submit can be identified as to what it is (waypoint, end, start, eating, lodging, etc), the weather, and a comment. You can see where you are (using Google maps) and even attach a photo.

While I occasionally added a comment and tried to select the proper weather icon once a day, I rarely changed the point identifier (I just set it to waypoint) and never added a photo. There are 2 reasons for this.

First, and mostly, full fingered biking gloves degraded the iPhone interface enough that I didn't want to do the detailed fingering (and refingering) necessary to get this correct. It was simply too much bother to stop my bike, straddle it, use both hands to remove my right hand glove (while the front fork quickly swiveled all the way to the side), and then start tapping. I could usually get the iPhone to recognize the two taps required to submit my current position without removing the gloves but any more than that was not so easy.

Second, it takes a bit of time for the iPhone to start-up the app and quite a bit more time for the it to acquire good accuracy with the GPS before it is ready to submit the point and a short (long with E) while for the submission to occur (though you don't have to wait for the confirmation). Without making any changes to the point information, adding a comment or attaching a photo, the entire operation could take anywhere from 45 seconds to several minutes if in E mode. While this isn't a particularly long time, in practice, stopping the bike and standing on the side of the road long enough for all this synchronizing to occur was a bother. In fact, it detracted from the "on the bike" experience enough that a few times when I thought about adding a point (usually when I made a turn onto a new road), I didn't want to stop and take the time, so I didn't.

From May 13 to June 10, I entered over 120 points and am greatly pleased with the resulting route map. Next time, I will let people know, in advance, about the map so they can bookmark it and keep tabs on me. I might even spend time entering more information (cut a hole in the index glove finger?). It is a great way to create a record of the actual route you rode and for others to keep tabs on where you are.

The app is free to download as are the first two maps you create. If you are going to take an iPhone on tour, get this app!

Google Maps

While there is an option on Track My Tour to see your current position (with Google Maps), I found that it was easier to do this directly with the Google Maps app. The main reason is that Google Maps provides other options besides just showing where you are. It also lets you find a location and get directions there.

I used Google Maps (with 3G access) several times to plot a route for my next day's ride, to find a hotel or place to eat, or determine how far I had to go to get where I was headed that day. The value of this app is greatly diminished when you only have E access. The response time required to update any movement of the map, its real value, is too long for any but the most patient. This app is completely useless without any network access (it can't download the maps), but this was rare on my ride and only stopped me from using it a few times.

I used this app several times a day and is one of the reasons I would strongly recommend taking an iPhone on tour.

Emailing Photos

I knew that the iPhone would be great at keeping in touch with email. What I didn't realize is how easy it would be to share my tour with my wife by emailing her photos throughout the day. This feature is a great addition for sharing a bike tour with others.

I tour with a quality, point and shoot, digital camera and wouldn't consider using the iPhone's camera as my only picture taking device. That said, whenever I came across something I thought my wife would like to see, I took out my iPhone, composed the shot as well as I could, and sent her an email. This greatly enhanced her sense of my tour and allowed us to share the experience a lot more than ever before. In all, I took and emailed about 100 pictures.

As on all bike tours, I would occasionally come across a scene that called out to be sent to a friend of mine. I would take a photo and email it off. It was a great way to stay connected.

Taking notes

I usually take written notes at the end of every touring day. I try to capture fleeting memories, route details, mileage and time, and any other tidbit that I might want to remember for later. This time, I decided to use the Notes app on the iPhone for this purpose.

I tried various typing methods (one finger, two fingers on one hand, two fingers with both hands, several fingers), but usually fell back on the one finger method. It was a bit tedious and I reduced my notes to single sentences instead my full paragraphs. It was serviceable but not completely satisfactory.

One odd thing I found was that the Notes app inserts an invisible Control-A character at the end of each sentence. This makes cutting and pasting a long note into an on-line text box bothersome as it adds all these extra, unseen characters. I gave up trying to post the notes I was taking into my on-line journal for precisely this reason. I have no idea why they do this but the end result is to greatly decrease the usefulness of the Notes app.

Listening to Books and Music

In the past, I've used a chewing gum pack-sized audio player (iRiver) to listen to audio books. This unit takes a AAA battery about every 3 or 4 days and can hold more than 10 books. Unlike the iPhone, it has external buttons that work well regardless of biking glove choice. But, it is limited in its storage and to maximize the number of books, I don't put any music on it.

I put a lot of music on my iPhone and also added several more audio books. Unlike the iRiver, which fits into a small, easily accessible pocket on my Camelbak, the iPhone needs to be in a pocket somewhere. I use the back pockets of my biking jersey for my camera and hankerchief and don't find keeping the iPhone there all that comfortable. Instead, I put the iPhone into a side pocket of the bag that sits on my front rack and draped the headphone wire over the handlebars. While this didn't cause any biking problems, the cord usually got in the way as soon as I wanted to get off the bike.

The most annoying thing, though, was the iPod app's inconsistent bookmarking. It is a bit of a bother when the audio player loses its place in a book. First, it takes awhile to notice that things don't sound right. Then, you have to fiddle with the book's tracks to find where you were. This happened so often that I began noting where I was in the book so that I could easily find my place the next time the iPod app lost it. Also, the player would randomly go to full volume, which meant more fiddling. The app really needs to do a better job of bookmarking.

All that said, I spent more time listening to the iPhone than the iRiver and will likely not bother with the iRiver on my next tour. The reason for this is batteries. Since I always keep the iPhone charged, it is a drag to also worry about a keeping an unused AAA battery available for the iRiver. It's just one more thing I'd rather not worry about. It also simplifies the process of getting books from CDs onto the players as they use different programs for doing so.

Yelp

Another free app that I found particularly useful was Yelp. This app shows you services that are nearby. It isn't a complete inventory of an area, so it won't show you everything around, but I found it good enough for motels, restaurants, and bike shops. It is integrated with Google Maps so that you can easily see where something is in relation to your current location and get directions. It also provides phone numbers that can be called with a single touch.

It is free and worth having.

Miscellaneous Apps

Just to be safe, I bought the Tom-Tom iPhone app. This is a GPS-based, routing and information designed for use in a car. Since it includes maps, I wanted it for those times when I would be out of AT&T's service area but needed to know where I was.

It took a very long time to load, is designed for use as a car navigation tool, and only something I would use if there were no other options. I rarely used it and would recommend against getting it for bicycle touring.

I used the Weather app several times, though tended to use weather websites for more information. It was good for a quick glance but didn't provide enough information to be relied upon solely.

I loaded the Warm Showers app during my trip. It does a good job (much better than trying to use the website on the iPhone) of showing nearby warm showers' hosts and making it easy to find out about and contact them. I highly recommend this app, if you are a warm showers' member. I suspect that it is useless without 3G network access.

I used a few game apps while I was waiting for or travelling on a ferry or had a some time to kill. I'm not a big iPhone gamer but they were nice to have the few

times I used them.

Conclusion

I've always carried some combination of cell phone and audio player with me when I tour. The iPhone not only provides these services, but adds a number of very useful capabilities that I am glad I had access to on tour. Not only will I take the iPhone on any future tours, but I will depend on it for all my audio needs.

It allowed me to have more flexibility on my tour by providing the ability to plan routes on the fly without paper maps at hand. Having access to local services with Google and Yelp is a great help when arriving in a new, unfamiliar place.

The ability to email photos and track my tour along the way vastly improved keeping in touch with loved ones and friends and enhanced my ability to share my experience with others, especially, my wife.

All in all, the iPhone made a meaningful improvement in my bike touring experience and I would highly recommend taking one on your next bike tour.

I have no experience with other "smart" phones and assume that they would provide similar capabilities. What's more, the quality of the service network, not one of the iPhone's strengths, is very important to the usefulness of the device.

I would be interested to hear from someone who toured with the iPhone or other smart phone in the American West, where cell phone service is less available, or in other countries.

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