I have been on a road trip from Bangalore to Chennai and back in the past few days, I always prided myself as a person who does not miss much when it comes to planning and especially on the tech side. So I packed three phones, charged fully . Then there was my Jiofy 2 device for internet access and the other miscellany like power packs and the ilk. But boy! Was there a lesson? You bet! Here are three things that my roadtrip has taught me so far.
Like always, the lesson is in the details and the minor ones are the key. So without much ado, here are the good ones that I got.
Sunlight and your display are not friends at all!
This is the biggest lesson. I had three different devices at various levels of auto-brightness and guess what? None of them served the purpose. My display was at best in a bad shape to even be a mirror if you get what I mean. Given the fact that it was a roadtrip and I was on the road and under the sun most of the time, it is a real deal-breaker. I was quite literally looking for shadows or an umbrella all the while and there aren’t many instances I found either. And I was in no way carrying any run-of-the-mill mobile with me, I had two top of the line flagship devices with good displays with me, so if you have the same, there you have it. How do you fix this? Sadly, you can’t, it’s up to the phone makers this one. They need to handle this in the future and do it pretty soon.
The Battery is a different beast altogether!
This is quite a kicker when it comes to it. Whatever the battery is rated at, however fast in charges, it is a different game when you are outdoors and travelling. Due to the fact that the phone is not only just a phone but also a productivity and connectivity enhancer that need to be on all the time, it becomes absolutely essential that the battery stands by you. When you are on the road, chances are that you need to be online, have location services enabled and also try to read email and get work done when you have to. What I am trying to tell you is, you need more juice when you are travelling as opposed to when you are at home or at office or your home office if you are like me. So always keep a power pack handy and remember to recharge regularly at specific time intervals even if you feel like you have enough juice because believe me, it’s better to be prepared than be at a loss when you are out and about.
Always carry your backup phone when you travel!
This is a golden lesson that you will thank me for later. Despite all that we discussed above, there arise situations when one phone is either out of juice or you need two devices. For example, you are driving to a location that you have not been to before and need maps and GPS running at all times till you get there and back. In that case, if you have only one phone, chances are that you will run out of battery really fast and then have no phone. The backup phone need not be a behemoth, but needs to be there when you need it. Saved my life this trip!
So tell me what are thing things that you learnt about tech when travelling?