So this week I'm in Australia (which is rediculously awesome btw), and have to say my iPhone sort of let me down.

I know that the iPhone GPS does not require a cell phone signal to function. I know this from first hand experiences. So I previewed all the area maps while at home, to get them in my buffer (i.e. I viewed Sydney and the surrounding area in the Maps app while I was still at home). In the past, what would then happen is my iPhone GPS would track me as the blue dot, imposed on the maps that were in the buffer - no data transmission necessary. Works great when I don't have cell phone signal.

But in Australia, this failed. And cost me time and aggrivation while trying to navigate (on the left side of the road). And eventually a bit of money.

What I think happened was a phone internal confusion. In Sydney my iPhone connected to a local cell phone provider, and then refused data transmission because Data roaming was turned off (because Data Roaming = Rate Rape). So it locked up on the GPS, and refused to get a GPS lock. It sucked a lot of battery, so I know the GPS was on. But it refused to display or track my location while I had cell phone service. And none of my other GPS apps found me either. And I could not turn off cell phone service! Other than to go into airplane mode, which would turn off the GPS. So basically, my GPS didn't work.

This sucked.

I could sometimes get it to find me if I did a hard-reset, but it was very very unreliable. Finally I just had to turn the data roaming on, and it worked great. Wonder how much that is going to cost me.

You can't blame AT&T for this - this SNAFU was all Apple.

I can't help but wonder if a jailbroke iPhone would have worked - or at least given me the option to turn off the cellure phone while keeping the GPS active.

In any event, iPhone users beware of this when traveling internationally.