Train journey with smartphone only
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I was in the France last week. There was a work related event (a
conference). I "normally" travel by plane to those events. Actually, I
have not travelled by plane from 2019 and actually I flew 4 four times
in last 10 years.
This time I used the train. It might sound strange as a flight to the
same can be about 2 hours and the train needs about 25 hours but it is
not so bad in reality. I need to get to the nearest international
airport (by train which means another 3-5 hours), wait on the airport
and the get from the destination airport to the city. Moreover, there
was no direct flight in my price level and with all the waiting the
total time was not better than in the case of the train.
And the trains tend to have stations near the city centers so I
actually able to walk to my hotel and to the conference venue. It was a
crazy adventure anyway: at some point in the Germany the locomotive
engine failed. They need more than hour to replace the locomotive.
Fortunately, there was 2 hour pause before the next train so we arrived
just in time to hop to the another train (to the TGV which was fast).
Because the nature of my travel I decided not to have a notebook with
me (after all, my GPD still has no battery as you may know). I used the
Sony Xperia smartphone with the Android (I am still planning to install
the Sailfish here but I am still on the step 1 of the installation
instructions "use your phone with the Android first to be sure that it
is working"). I had also the Gemini PDA with me as a spare but I
preferred the Sony (the Gemini's older Andoid does not support the
"Elsevier Conference App" which was required and it also has an older
and less powerful GPS chip).
So I had to behave as a many people around me: I had to read e-mails on
the smartphone screen (there weren't many), write my notes (in
the Evernote), surf the WWW when necessary (really people do this
voluntarily?!) and so on. I also have had to run that Elsevier App
frequently to find the lectures, track the changes and so on. It is
pretty terrible: not only it is not fast on my device but it also shows
an ad at start which cannot be skipped for several seconds (a picture
with names of journals which are related to the event). It was very
annoying as I don't keep the app opened all times in order to save the
battery.
I also used it for the (so-called) on-line train tickets. This is what
I never did previously. The local train company (the Ceske Drahy) still
accepts the plastic cards, too. This thing is much smaller and does not
consume electricity. The steward just scans the QR code on the card and
that is (the smartphone app works in the same way - it shows the QR,
too).
All the companies support the printed tickets (in the A4 paper size)
which is nice but the A4 is way too big. Anyway, I printed all of them
as a backup solution (and left them in my backpack except for the OEBB).
So what was my smartphone travelling experience?
Czech Republic - Ceske drahy:
The app - while it can be improved - is probably the best. Once it
synchronises with the server, all the tickets are available and the
steward can scan them directly from the phone. There is also option to
download all the train schedules for off-line use. If it is on-line
then it can even add the delay to the schedules to show you time of
arrival to train stops and so on. The problem is that there is no WiFi
in many trains. The Ceske drahy share some trains with companies from
other countries (Poland, Slovakia, Germany) and the services are not
always the same. For my outbound trip it was a train from the Poland so
without any signs of the WiFi. Even if it is a train of the Ceske Drahy
with a declared WiFi on-board it usually works only within the country.
If the train crosses the border (to any country) the WiFi stops to work.
Austria - OEBB:
The OEBB app is the worst: it allows one to download the ticket in a
PDF but it states that inside Austria this PDF (not the app!) can be
shown on the screen on the phone or tablet but outside the country is
has to be printed! Well, these Austrians are known to be devoted to
environmental savings...
I had to cross the border twice so I duly printed it.
There was no working WiFi on the board of the NightJet train, by the
way. And the locomotive broke in a half of the journey. While the train
itself was fine these detail were not what I wished.
Germany - DB:
Their app is better: tickets can be synchronised and the steward can
scan them from the app. There is a function called "Comfortable
Check-in" (or something like that): when I sat on my place I just
pressed the button in the app to tell the train staff that I am here.
So no one should ask me for the ticket any more. The lady from the
train staff actually came to look if I am actually here ad to wish me a
pleasant journey. But didn't asked for the ticket. Too bad that this
service was available only in one of my trains...
The app was no off-line ability so when there is no WiFi the one only
can see scheduled arrival to the destination. But in the long-distance
DB trains the WiFi worked (some trains are operated by their partner
companies and there it may not work at all).
I travelled in the first class for in one of these trains (there were
no free places in the second class) and it was nice: when we reached
delay longer than 15 minutes then the steward came to offer us free
butter cookies! Interestingly, it also seems that the train to/from the
Bavaria have more space between seats than the train in other part of
county (but it can only my illusion).
The paper ticked thing here is strange: you cannot jsut print it if you
do not want to print all the 10 or so pages of instructions/conditions
which are embedded... Well, how about the environment protaction?
France - SNCF:
I only used the TGV service. It is fast (the peak speed was 350 km/h, I
think). Of course, in many places it has to be slow (in urban areas,
near the stations and so) but the average speed is impressing. We
crossed the France from the North to the South in less than 6 hours!
Their app is not bad. For some reasons I refuses to work in English on
the Gemini PDA but on the Sony it was fine (I mean that the menus and
buttons were mostly in English - the most of other information remain
in French). It shows a QR code of the ticket. If one has no
registration on the SNCF it still can work: the tickets can be uploaded
by scanning the QR (I think) or by entering the reservation code.Then
it shows the necessary information (train departure and arrival, seat
number and so on). When it is on-line then it can show detailed
schedule and delays. If the WiFi works, of course - on one of parts the
WiFi router refused to do so. The TGV itself (I travelled in one
relatively new train and on one that looks to be one of the first
models - the older worked better, by the way) is very comfortable both
in the first and second class. It is usually fully booked to my
surprise (I ordered the return journey just a few days after the first
one and had to get the first class because the second one was already
sold out!). And if was actually full for most of time.
Well, hotels. WiFi seem to be everywhere. In the South France, the
router was visibly overloaded during evenings otherwise it worked. No
problems in other places. Most (cheaper, I have no idea about expensive
ones) hotels usually provide no table to works comfortably with a
keyboard-enabled device. And it is quite normal to have just one chair
in a double-bed rooms.
I also noticed that in some cities that it is possible to rent a bike
without a smartphone - they have credit card terminal on bikes! Quite a
nice thing as I obviously have no data connection on the Sony (my
Gemini is the WiFi-only model anyway).
As for a camera: the Gemini has a poor main camera so it is not a good
tool for making pictures. The Sony is much better however it has no
optical zoom. So I used a old digital compact camera (the old Sony
DSC-W530). It was just fine: it is smaller than a smartphone and has a
good enough optical zoom. While Xperia's camera chip is technically
superior I usually can make better pictures with the compact camera
than with the smartphone. This might be just a lack of experience, I
think.
The conclusion is that I still don't understand how some people can
live with their smartphones only. Reading of older e-mails is not
practical (not speaking of working with some documents, tables and so),
WWW browsing is often OK but sometimes very hard (needs too much
scrolling). Relying on the GPS for navigation is not a good idea
especially if you are in an old medieval city with narrow streets
(printed map served me better). Replacing of all conference programme,
books of abstracts and other informations by some smartphone or web
application is just silly.
Actually, several times I regretted the I didn't had the Palm or at
least the Psion Organiser II with me.
And expecting that anyone who was want to use local services (to rent a
bike, for example) will happy to install an another smartphone
application is just stupid. Fortunately at least some people still know
this and offer an alternative ways.
I think that - if I will travel to such distance once more which seems
to be rather unlikely - I will rely on the paper stuff much more and
probably will brink a PDA with my (and possibly a laptop if the GPD
will be repaired or I will decide to get something else).
Written on the Thinkpad x61s on its strange (Scandinavian or so) but
fine keyboard.
