By Russ, on August 9th, 2008
Of course you can simply browse the internet directly using a modern phone with GPRS. But even my Samsung i780 is a sloth when using Internet Explorer or oven the Opera browser to do this. Stick the phone into a laptop using the USB cable and suddenly browsing the internet becomes bearable – even “acceptable” – its magic…see the picture – my phone is the tiny display behind the laptop.
You can of course use bluetooth to connect the phone and the laptop – if the GPRS signal is weak try putting the phone in a (dry) place in the cockpit while using the laptop in the saloon. This will give a better GPRS signal to the phone but the bluetooth signal to the laptop is slightly slower than having the phone wired directly in using USB. Experiment with both methods.
So on my recent sailing holiday to the Normandy coast I thought I would try out the possibility of using this combination. I can happily report that both in the marina at Fecamp and even sailing along the coast – while in proximity to the coast of course – you can access my weather page – and all the weather links and the UK Met Office 24hr forecast.
What I do is then copy and paste the forecast, and right click on images like the barometric charts and save them to a table in a Word document that I keep as a passage plan. Very useful for reviewing as the passage develops – and the possibility of having to change plan dawns on you!
If you want more information about using your mobile phone on board check out my dedicated “phones page“….
By Russ, on July 6th, 2008
My little venture into experimenting with mobile phones and their use on my boat has stirred up a lot of readers of this blog it appears see comments here
Questions include:
- Can I use my smartphone to connect my laptop to the internet?
- Can I use my phone as a chart plotter?
- Which software and maps can I use on my phone?
- How can I improve the interface on my phone? – I cant get to the Bluetooth and other settings easily because they buried under so many menu options…
- Can I get the Met Office weather forecast and barometric charts on my phone?
I had not realised that so many of you are as frustrated as I am in getting more out of my expensive smartphone when they seem to promise so much….
Just to make one point absolutely clear I am referring to the latest crop of smartphones “not the common or garden phones” – and I dont care if you have 3G, MP3, or any other acronym – I mean a phone that is running a real mini operating system such as Windows Mobile 6 or Symbian.
As a result of all this interest I have decide to create a whole new section dedicated to mobile phone use on boats – look across the tabs at the top of the page….and you will see a tab called “Phones”.
I have only just started, but please – come back and check because I will be trying to answer the questions raised as best as I can on this new section.
By Russ, on April 2nd, 2008
I have had emails from number of people saying that there are heaps of mobile chart plotters out there – but I beg to differ!
There are heaps of mobile chart plotters for the Land but not the Sea 
For example even Garmin only cover the Land ….Garmin Mobile XT transforms your GPS-enabled smartphone into a full-featured street navigator. Routing software and detailed mapping are preloaded on a microSD card – just plug it into your phone and you’re ready to navigate – on foot or in your car. With no subscription fee or additional equipment required, Mobile XT works anywhere, even outside your phone’s network coverage area.
Minimum requirements for Windows Mobile®, Palm® and Symbian® devices: 16MB program memory, 128MB storage card minimum (256MB or more recommended), 2GB storage card for full coverage
You get :
- City Navigator® NT street maps …one of:-
- Garmin Mobile™ XT North America
- Garmin Mobile XT,Europe
- Garmin Mobile XT,UK & Ireland
- Garmin Mobile XT navigation software
- miniSD and SD adapters
…so when will the Sea version come out – well …never me-thinks – why should they when they have so many solid and reliable handheld plotters already. It is the new entrants into the market that may be motivated to creep in via the backdoor of the smartphone devices. Not the incumbents like Raymarine or Garmin.
By Russ, on March 31st, 2008
Further to the post on the arrival of solid state computers in particular the HTC 7501 I see that HTC have got 2 new models…
The top of the range HTC 7510 now runs Windows Mobile 6, has a 16Gb flash drive for storage – more than enough for charts, tracks and waypoints – and as a mobile phone it will support :
o HSDPA/WCDMA: 2100 MHz for Europe
o 850/1900 MHz for USA,
o with up to 384 kbps upload and 1.8 Mbps download speeds
o GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Quad-band 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz (The device will operate on any frequencies available from the cellular network.)Click here for a full specification
Using the internal GPS and you could have a very capable chartplotter / phone / email / camera / web browser that can work with your current phone provider or WiFi when you are in the marina or in a cafe using a WiFi hotspot. Of course you would also need chartplotter software that works under Windows Mobile 6 such as the Pathaway software from Muskoka. more on that here…
For pictures of this tiny unit see Endgadget
By Russ, on January 1st, 2008
A number of people have written asking about errors connecting their brand new Nokia smartphones to their University WLAN.
If your University uses Eduroam then it will use a type of EAP (Extended access protocol) called EAP-TTLS PAP. other types of EAP are EAP-PEAP and EAP-MSCHAPv2 .
This is a problem with Symbian S60 phones including Nokia – they dont support the EAP-TTLS PAP protocol.
Another reason that I decided to get a Windows Mobile 6 Pro phone.
There is even a petition to try and force Nokia to support this protocol..
http://www.petitiononline.com/NokiaPAP/
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