Best traveller's phone or app?
 

It seems my well -travelled Nokia Navigator 6710 is dead, RIP. So now it comes to the question of "What next?"

I'm only asking this in temrs of mobile phones that are traveller-friendly. The features I liked about the 6710:

* Good battery life - about a week on standy.

* Very useful turn-by-turn navigator, with speed camera locations and speed limits.

* Able to download free maps for nearly every country, with very detailed city maps for most places. The downloads were on my PC, so no cost for data download, so I could prepare in advance for a trip at no cost. I guess this is a Nokia feature, not specifically a 6710 feature. Don't want any phone that makes me use the phone to download maps, especially not during the actual trip!

* Four band, so it works everywhere, even USA.

Not so good was trip logging. I used "Sports Tracker" which is a workout log (complete with upload of music used for the workout, hooray, such a useful feature, not). However I was able to record a route and upload it onto Google maps even when I had no Nokia map availlable for most of the actual trip. It showed speed, altitude, average speed, max speed (good), but had no way to add photos or notes along the way (very bad).

If I go down the path of Smart Phone, are there any killer travel apps? I don't mind paying if it's good enough. It seems like thee really isn't anything much that's not a smart phone these days, but they aren't so good for travel in temrs of battery life, fragile, bulky.

Suggestions?

I don't have an answer for you but I can share my experience with a smartphone, a Motorola Milestone 2 that I've been using for a year or so.

Pros:
- I don't need a laptop for travel as it has a relatively large screen with good enough resolution and a slide-out keyboard. Finding a free WIFI spot is easier when you are walking around with the phone in hand.
- You have access to great offline maps in apps like Locus, SovietMilitaryMaps , OSMAnd etc. Better than OVImaps on my old Nokia 5210.
- Photo quality is surprisingly good, there are a lot of apps for that, too.
- Durable metal case and glass. I dropped it twice and travelled quite a lot with it.. no probs so far.

Cons:
- Not that great as a phone. A simple old phone can be much lighter and easier to use for calls.
- Battery life is very poor. You can charge it every day.
- It would be great if I could copy stuff from memory cards and portable drives on it. I think some of the smartphones have that option.

Actually, there is a related discussion in this thread for both the hardware and the software aspects (the technology is developing rapidly it seems with quite a few more "waterproof" smartphones coming to the market).

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...armin-et-63191

I'd suggest to have a look at the Motorola Razr Maxx.
Actually, I'm trying to get one myself these days, but it's still a bit too expensive for me. Prices will probably drop a bit more soon because Motorola has just announced the successor model Razr Maxx HD which will launch markets the next month(s) (depending on country).
It's battery life is unmatched by any other smart phone, it seems to be quite robust and even water resistant (lots of videos on youtube), but isn't very small with it's 4,3" screen. It's difficult, however, to find smaller smart phones with such capabilities these days.
Software wise it's running stable and smoothly on Android's 4.0.x (Ice Cream Sandwich) according to various reviews.

Cheers,
Kevin