ROAD TRIP! Installment 3

Today we made it as far as outside Carlsbad, NM and tomorrow, we will visit the Carlsbad Caverns before heading off to San Antonio, TX. It will be a long and busy day.

On today's drive, a loooooong drive, we experienced areas of excellent service that allowed at home-like browsing via the EVO 4G hotspot on-the-go.

However, in a few areas where there was truly nothing at all for mile after mile, we noticed little to no signal on the Sprint phone for the first time. By contrast, and unexpected, we also noticed that there was NO AT&T service in many instances. Bravo Sprint!

Note: Even as good as is the Wilson Sleek, it cannot overcome NO signal. You just can't boost NO signal at all.

I also had the opportunity to pair the Bluetooth capability in the Magellan RoadMate 3055 to my personal phone - a Sony Ericsson C902. Pairing worked and the unit imported my contacts, a nice feature. It also supports voice dialing in my C902. There are some contacts I've set up with voice dialing by recording into the phone the word I speak that signals that number/person to be called.

I made a call to Mrs. Gadget back at Gadget Central at home base in SoCal. She let the call go to voice mail. No, she was not ignoring me (or was she?). In this way, on that PhonePower VoIP line, I get voice mail in email, allowing both of us to hear the quality of the call. The quality was surprisingly good! It sounded better than from some BT headsets. I'll try more along the way.

Also worthy of note is that when the EVO 4G hits good service, Internet speeds, even with 3G seem quite acceptable, whether directly from the handset or using hotspot capability via my PC or Pam's MacBook. Today, I did all the driving, so it was she on her MacBook. As one not "into" gadgets, she commented on how normal was the performance, reminded that we were on the road driving at a speed I will not mention.

On the eating-our-way-to-Texas subject, there was nothing remarkable on this stop, but we are looking forward to some interesting choices once we hit San Antonio - a few Man V Food recommendations that will be open late, when we expect to make it to that area. It's a long drive from Carlsbad to San Antonio!

My goal is to take more comparative videos with the Flip Slide HD and Kodak PlaySport tomorrow and to use the EVO 4G video and still capabilities to show more to you. Now that I have written about this, I'll have to come through!

I'll also try to remember to tell you about some of the apps for the EVO 4G I've found useful in my next installment.

More as time permits.

Thanks for reading.