Ben's Talk3G Blog

I've never travelled to a foreign city before purely to explore it. My schedule has never really allowed for such endeavours, the rare moments of holiday reserved for lying in the sun doing absolutely nothing.

Data was a concern. When you're primarily going to be in one place it's easy to ensure WiFi, but there would be no way out of using cellular roaming data on this excursion. Fully prepared to have to keep my usage of iPad and iPhone to an absolute minimum, and still pay a hefty bill upon my return, I set off.

No sooner had I popped out the chunnel in France, Vodafone's automatic text rolled in - and to my great approval! An automatic charge of £2 a day, applied when I first used data, would cover 25MB of usage. After which there would be further per MB charges, but Vodafone would text me first to warn me. How good is that?

Unfortunately Three offer no such deal, and at over £2 per MB data roaming on the iPad stayed firmly disabled for most of the trip. A damn shame, really, and the first time I'd wished for a Vodafone microSIM inside! Three UK really need to look at their roaming data tariffs if they truly want to be known as the mobile broadband network.

Back to the iPhone. I was hesitant at first. In fact, as it was a typical busy Friday and my work email was polling every 15 minutes, I got through 10MB relatively quickly. I switched this down to manual and things slowed down. I was using maps, Twitter, and Facebook just as if I were at home, and not once did I go over the 25MB. As some of you may have noticed from both social media channels, I was also posting pictures. The only thing to test my patience was the speed of SFR, but the problems were mostly restricted to tourist hotspots.

What stuck out for me was that I survived three days with just iDevices and no laptop. I know a lot of you wont find this a big deal, but I run a 24x7 business operating in over a hundred countries - putting my faith in a relatively paired-down operating system and having it withstand the test is about as big an endorsement as I can give it. Yes, it can take longer for me to perform business tasks on the iPad (longer still on the iPhone), but there are advantages abound, particularly for the iPad. Use it anywhere. Astounding battery life. Thin and light enough to carry in my satchel while walking tens of kilometres a day.

iOS 5 and iCloud are about the cut the cord, settling iDevices free at last. It's quite possible, ladies and gentlemen, that by iOS 6-7 we'll have a new OS on our hands that's far more than second fiddle to the desktop.