2014 - Year of the smartphone?

[DeanoL]

I think they were asked on site to provide coverage as people got desperate... for some reason.

I sometimes think they care a bit too much up there and give in to some relatively silly requests which ought to be replied to with "if you love the music and festival that much then you'd come anyway"

[cdm22]

O2 user here and suprisingly had 4G coverage, although only ever used it in the campsite waiting for others.

[rawrsomesauce]

EE user, at the Pyramid, and whenever I was in John Peel (although oddly never at the Other), whenever I tried to use 3G to check twitter or something between acts it just wouldn't load. Especially in the recharge tent (although I suspect that's down to EE saturating their own network with the wifi)

[Hello... I'm Johnny Cash]

Used a temporary EE 4G sim and found the coverage to be mostly excellent.

Found using WhatsApp to send and receive locations in a crowd very effective, the app completely replaced clashfinder and the map, I took a lot of photos & videos, used it to kill an hour in the morning round the tent while I was waiting for my group to get out of bed and it completely removed my slight worry about being contactable in an emergency (had a toddler at home).

It was a new number that only a select few people had and I switched off syncing so I wasn't bothered by emails and Facebooks etc... coming through.

In other words it did improve my festival and I'd definitely do it again.

It was insured so I wasn't stressing about losing it.

Benefit it EE? Well they had £15 out of me and all other things being equal I'd have my next contract with them. Although I'll probably stick with Three for the unlimited data, but we'll see.

As for people walking around looking down at their phones, that might have been me. Do you get annoyed by people waking around looking at the line up and map on their lanyards? Because that's effectively what I was doing.

Edited July 3, 2014 by Hello... I'm Johnny Cash

[nicktrow]

Looks like EE are improving their onsite coverage next year: http://news.techworld.com/mobile-wireless/3528711/ee-to-use-new-spectrum-in-a-bid-to-improve-network-at-glastonbury-2015/

[Brave Sir Robin]

I bought a cheap Nokia as a 'festival phone'. It ran out of battery!! Anker wouldn't charge it either, problem with the lead I think. So I was back to the iphone and fearing losing it, but luckily a mate had a rubber thing that clamped around it and then attached to a belt buckle - genius!

Also on Three, also showed as having 3G but would never load.

Bringing a cheap camera was a real bonus, not worried about battery life and not overly worried about losing it so took loads more snaps than usual (so now have a clearer idea of where I went and what I did!)

Funniest tech-related thing we saw was, walking back after sunrise on Monday, a couple off their tits carrying around a Macbook and dancing to the music coming out of it!

[Avalon_Fields]

I had my iphone, but in many ways I wish I hadn't, I wish I could have weaned myself off it for the festival.

It's 'essential' to keep in touch with friends and meet up, but at the same time there's the hassle of recharging (I had an expensive Power Gorilla which didn't bleedin' last!!) and inevitably I ended up checking emails and loads of (useless) texts I'd subscribed to from See Tickets, etc to try and get info on the festival, none of which was any use to me.

I'd like to find a way to go next year without the iphone. I'm happier to use a compact camera for photos anyway....