So, question: do you think that having a data plan makes you more or less efficient? When I used to have a data plan, I found that I could stay up to date with real-time information on the go. So, at first I thought it was a productivity tool. But over time, I found that I spent more time checking email, because I was checking it more frequently. Instead of just going to my inbox once every couple of hours and cleaning everything in one-fell swoop quickly, with a data plan, I would be checking my email all the time, and on a mobile device it's a much slower process to clean up an inbox. I've since gotten rid of my data plan, and honestly, given the inefficiencies of my constant email/twitter/fb-checking, I don't think it's worth my time to go back for the purpose of staying on top of things. That said, what I do miss is the ability to effectively have a GPS on the go. Thoughts?
It might be worth noting that unless you travel widely, you don't need a data plan for GPS. Cache maps when on wifi then use your device's GPS/A-GPS/tower triangulation functionality.
Caching maps is actually incredibly difficult. I just took a weekend trip to Death Valley (no cell coverage) and wanted to do this on my Android Evo.
Google Maps doesn't cache more than a few tiles so it's totally useless. There are a number of apps in the Market that will download maps locally - one downloads Google Map tiles illegally (with mixed success) and the rest I couldn't get to work.
Do you have any advice or experience you can share?
No experience on Android, sorry. My experience is with Maemo devices, which have the excellent Maemo Mapper software, with extensive caching options. It supports a million data sources including Google Maps and OpenStreetMap (and you can add your own). Functionality ranges from simply caching every tile it displays to a function that downloads every tile for every desired zoom level for a given area, and the area can be defined by simply what's visible on screen right now. Zoom out on NYC, press download, and you'll get every corner.
I'm not sure how legal Google Maps caching is, but in my experience OpenStreet is a decent alternative in most of developed world.
Having experienced this, it's really annoying when Google Mobile Maps on my Blackberry insists on redownloading the map of my neighbourhood for the fiftieth time. It's extra fun on EDGE.
I also have no experience with possibly caching directions, being a man and having never needed them ;)
Look under "Cache Settings" in Maps. There's a checkbox for "Prefetch on Mobile". If it's off and you're not using Maps while on Wi-Fi then I wouldn't expect much caching to happen. You can also see how much data Maps has cached.
I don't have a data plan and I find caching works well on my Nexus One when I ask for directions before leaving the house. I haven't tried it on a long road trip though. For comparison, the cache size on my phone is 37M now.
So I'm not too sure, as I've only had it for a few days, but I already check fb/twitter/email WAY too often on my laptop, so I am sort of concerned about that. I haven't been checking email on my phone too much though, and I'm trying not to let it affect my habits too much, except for the added convenience of being able to look stuff up / post to twitter / share photos, etc. I'm very hesitant to allow push notifications for email, fb, etc.
In my recent experience with my new Android phone, it's best to get an unlimited plan for the first few weeks or months, when you're playing the most with the App store, downloading and trying lots of apps.
But once that inevitably tapers off, and you find the few you use most often and uninstall the rest, then you should check your data usage again to see if your normal email/etc checking habits use less than the lower tier data plans with quotas, and switch back to one of those if so.
