Taking your iPhone skiing

When I got my iPhone, the one place I didn’t expect it to perform well was on the fair slopes of the French Alps.

I actually took it as a granted that it wouldn’t work there at all when buying it, and accepted that it’d either have to take an old phone with the current O2 sim, or just be without phone while on the slopes.

This assumption was based on the fact that the screen is the main input device, and would be difficult to use with your bear fingers in the cold (and probably very difficult to see).

Well, after conducting a bit of a field test over the holiday season, that’s actually not so true.

Screen clarity

Because there’s a reflective coating behind the LCD screen, you can actually see the screen rather well on top of a mountain where the sun is shining very very brightly.

Handling

You just can’t ski and use a mobile phone at the same time. Even if you’ve got a handsfree setup, it’s difficult; I find it distracting to talk to others while skiing full stop, let alone having an all-out conversation.

The only way you’ll be able to use the iPhone while on a slope is to stop and take your gloves off. This isn’t really as bad as it sounds - if anything, it means you’ll keep the call length (and so cost) down to a minimum, because you’ve got to get you hands inside those gloves as soon as possible.

The iPhone’s call-answering earphones might actually make it even easier than any other handset to deal with calls. If you’re listening to music, it’ll fade it out and with a click of the button you’re talking away. Since you can do that with gloves on, there’s no faffing about involved. Click to end the call, and the music resumes.

That’s an excellent way to receive a call when compared to removing the iPod, removing the gloves and then fiddling about with your ski jacket as you try to get out your phone.

Additionally, the iPhone is also a bit of a style icon; perfectly suited to the (questionably) fashionable pistes of Europe.

So, all-in-all, the iPhone turns out to be a pretty ski-friendly phone.