Since I started traveling, my iphone has become my best friend. It has saved me so many times, I don’t even understand how people used to be able to travel in the pre-iphone age. Hmm…that’s only about 5 years ago! Times change quick don’t they. In this post I will give you some iPhone travel tips that I’ve found useful. Also check out my article on Iphone travel apps.

Navigation

The map application is one of the most important apps to have when you travel. Finding your way around, looking up the nearest Starbucks, looking for hotels, dive shops, restaurants etc. Works great…if you have a 3G connection. Unfortunatly, this is not always the case, specially when you travel through more remote parts of the world.

The first way I tried to solve this issue was to open up my map app, zoom in on the area that I wanted to go to and take a screenshot. Screenshots are saved under ‘photos’, so I would at least have a static map to look at. Problem was, it obviously wouldn’t show the blue dot to pinpoint my current location.

Then one day I opened up my map application, used it to find my way and it worked fine, only to realize later that I didn’t have 3G. I then realized that the iPhone stores the maps in it’s memory and the blue GPS dot doesn’t require an internet connection! From this point on, before leaving my hotel, I would load the maps of the areas that I wanted to go to using the WIFI. This way you can almost use it as if you have an internet connection. You won’t be able to look up places or get directions, but at least you can see where you are. This completely saved me one time in the Philippines when I was on my way to a remote dive resort. It turned out to be quite difficult to find and the taxi driver didn’t know the area very well. To make things worse, night had fallen and he was running out of gas.

Take pictures of important info

A friend of mine once advised me to take a picture of important documents, like my passport, flight tickets and hotel info. This was a great piece of advice and it has helped me a lot. One time I in Rio de Janeiro I forgot to bring my ID so I showed the bouncer a picture of my passport and he let me in without a problem.

It can’t recall how many times I’ve been in a cab trying to explain to the driver what hotel I was staying at. This can prove a haunting task if the driver only speaks chinese for example. Being able to show him a picture of the map with the hotel pinpointed and a picture of the hotel information made things a lot easier.

Taking pictures has become a routine for me. When I park a car in a big parking lot (at airports for example), my room number, the name plate of a street, WIFI passwords, login codes, you name it. Any info that I might need at some point goes straight into my photo galery. I create a special album for this so that I don’t need to scroll through thousands of pictures.
Preserving battery power

Traveling means not always being able to charge your iphone (in planes, at airports, on a boat, on hikes etc). To preserve battery power, make sure you don’t have apps running in the background. To check for this, double click the main button twice to see whats currently running.

Personal hotspot

If you have a 3G connection on your Iphone but no WIFI and you have to do some work on your laptop, you can create a personal hotspot. This option should appear under settings. Your Iphone will use the 3G to create a WIFI network that you can connect to with your laptop or other devices.

Hope these iPhone travel tips will prove useful to you! One more piece of advice: never lose your iPhone! Happened to me one time while I was in Thailand and it sucked!