We traveled out of town for Memorial Day weekend which included some cross-country flights to bring us to the land of the (former) Governator, Napa wine country, and most importantly, In-N-Out Burger. I brought my iPad and iPhone with me (shocking, I know) and a few other accessories to avoid severe internet and entertainment deprivation during the trip. Here’s a list of a few things I brought and thought you might find useful for traveling with your own mobile devices.
Headphone splitter
I had rented a movie via iTunes (The Mechanic, if you must know) and also had a few saved on my iPad that I’d ripped myself. Since it would have been completely rude to watch them without letting my husband join in, I brought a headphone splitter. I have 2 of these for some unknown reason – one by Monster and the other by Belkin. Fortunately I tested both out before we left and found that the Monster one inexplicably wasn’t working with my iPad but the Belkin one did. So the Belkin one came with us. And prevented my husband from getting mad at me on the plane. At least for not sharing my movies with him.
Good headphones
Yeah, I couldn’t help but mention this one. These are the Bowers & Wilkins P5 headphones I got the other day in a frenzy of unmitigated gadget lust. I was worried that they wouldn’t be as effective at blocking out plane noise as the in-ear headphones I usually use but they worked surprisingly well in the end.
Oh, and my husband’s hearing isn’t as good as mine and he cranked up the volume on the movies we watched on my iPad. If I had been wearing some in-ear headphones, I firmly believe he would have made me deaf. Which would have made me very angry.
Breffo Spiderpodium
I hate suction cup window mounts. They always fall at the worst possible moment and I’m left digging around for my GPS unit or phone in the driver’s side footwell and still trying to keep an eye on the road, all while cursing violently enough to singe the steering wheel. Yeah. So no more suction cup mounts for me.
The Breffo Spiderpodium is neat little gadget that’s shaped like a spider and bendable so that you can form it into a stand or mount for just about anything. I used mine to hold mount my iPhone on the dashboard of our rental car by hooking it into an air vent. Worked like a charm and required no cursing whatsoever.
Auxiliary audio cable
It seems that most rental cars these days have an auxiliary port for audio accessories and I’ve made it a habit to bring a Belkin auxiliary cable with me when I travel so I can listen to my own music instead of surfing for radio stations or hauling CDs with me.
Emergency phone charger
I’ve had my iPhone’s battery die on me once or twice and it was ugly. Really ugly. There were tears of aggravation, gnashing of teeth, and general unladylike behavior all around.
To prevent such trauma in the future, I always keep a portable charger in my purse – a Kensington K39264US travel charger, to be specific. It has a flip-out USB connector so I can just plug it into my computer or the iPhone’s AC charger to charge it without needing to carry an additional cord. And the cap that protects the dock connector plug also acts as a stand to prop the iPhone up. It’s powerful enough to charge my iPhone almost fully when it gets below 10%. I never leave home without it.
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That’s it accessory-wise. When it came to apps, Navigon’s MobileNavigator is my navigation app of choice and it worked perfectly for us in California. Simply Postcards is also excellent – we were able to use a photo of us taken by some kind strangers on the beach in Carmel-by-the-Sea as a postcard image and send it to friends and family (8 different addresses) all at once, saving us the time and effort to find and buy postcards, write messages on each, buy postage and then mail them. Fantastic!
Our trip was good. No iPhones died, we didn’t get lost, we ate lots of great food, saw friends and family and I didn’t go deaf. Total success in my book.
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