A Day in the Life using Call Me by Simple Girl Scraps

This was a fun LO to make. I wanted to document some of my favorite apps right now, so I took screenshots of all the apps I used on Friday afternoon. (you can do that by pressing the Home button and the Power button at the same time on iPhones). I really liked how it turned out, and I might do something similar for the apps I use on the iPad, which are mostly different. It’ll be fun to see how my app choices change over time, although with the exception of Pandora, I’ve been using all of these for years.

Credits: Call Me ellies, Kraft papers, and alphas by Simple Girl Scraps

Journaling reads- I use my phone so much during the day. Everything from listening to music, to making my grocery list, to taking pictures. The one thing I don’t use my phone much for is making calls.

Apps pictured are Pandora, iChat, Tweetbot, LoseIt, Todledoo, Grocery IQ, and Instagram

*I am a Creative Team Member. This means that I receive free products in exchange for making and advertising layouts for designers. However, the opinions expressed here are my own. The enthusiasm expressed here is definitely my own. See more of my CT layouts here.

iPhone 5

I got the newest iPhone this weekend. Best Buy has a great buyback program and they took my old iPhone 4 back for $150, so we only ended up paying $50. Pretty sweet. (My phone was in excellent condition thanks to my Otter Box and we still had the box and all the cords and such, so that’s partially why I got such a good price).

So here’s my review.

Pros:
Speed. So much faster than my 4, especially the camera. Huge improvement there.
Siri. I know it’s a gimmick, and still technically in beta (I think), but I really hate to type, so anything that let’s me easily dictate instead of typing is a big plus. I’ve used Siri several times today already, mostly for setting timers and texting.
Camera. Not only super fast, but great picture quality. The thing I was most looking forward to is the ability to do panoramic photos. I haven’t been able to do any just yet, but hopefully by next weekend I’ll be a bit steadier on my feet and I can try it out.
Ease of switching phones. I backed up right before I left home that day, so all of my info was ready in the cloud to start using right away once we bought the new phone. There were some hangups, most notably with my iTunes music and podcasts. I ended up having to plug the phone in to finish transferring everything over. But overall it was super easy and I don’t think I cursed once.

Cons:
Siri. The network isn’t exactly zippy 100% of the time. I had to tell Siri who my husband was at least three times before it stuck, due to network timeouts.
Screen size. I know everyone was drooling over the larger screen, and I thought I would too. But it still feels awkward to me, especially when taking screenshots. Probably something I’ll get used to though.
Headphones. I take issue with the apple commercial featuring the headphones. It’s annoying and arrogant. (I know Jason is rolling his eyes right now). So I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the new design anyway. I have weird ears. Headphones never stay in. Ever. So the new headphones went to Jason. Which makes us both happy. And if anyone has any headphone recs, I’m all ears 😛
Podcast app. I know this is an OS thing, and not strictly in iPhone 5 thing, but let me just take a minute to jump on my soapbox and say, I HATE the podcast app. I have been a podcast junkie for years, and have spent a lot of time carefully curating smart playlists to maximize my podcast enjoyment. And the stupid Podcast app took all of that functionality away. They broke something that was just fine. I tried to work with it, I really did. But it pissed me off to the point that I deleted the app entirely. Now my podcasts come through the regular iTunes app again. It’s a little buggy now and then, but much better than the stupid stupid stupid Podcast app.

To be honest, I didn’t want to upgrade at all. I was still mostly happy with my old phone. But Jason found the buyback offer and it was hard to pass up. I’m loving the speed and the camera the most right now. All in all, I’m really happy with the new phone.

What’s your system? (mobile)

I listened to the latest episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable recently where they talked about your scrapping system. That is such a big topic I just had to write about it.

I loved hearing about Amy Tan’s system of scrapping using mini books. She basically keeps a little bag of stuff in her purse that she uses to collect things so that when she gets home, a lot of the work is already done. She keeps a book to jot down notes, a pen, tape, even a tiny printer to print photos on the go. She must have a Huge Purse. I’m really intrigued by that idea, and might work on something like that for the summer.

That got me thinking about my own digi version of scrapping on the go. How can a digital person keep up with things while on a trip, or just collecting everyday things for Project Life?

My best tool is definitely my iPhone 4. I can’t say enough about the ease of use, the great camera, and of course all the apps! I would definitely not get as many pictures as I do if I were using the regular camera.

The thing on the phone that I use the most for scrapping is the Momento app. I’ve seen a lot of people sing it’s praises and I’m definitely joining that choir. You can use it to jot down notes, collect photos, and it even grabs feeds from your social network. I’ve been using it since last spring and it has been so helpful to refer back to, especially if I need to remember details for a layout.

Camera apps. I want to do a whole post on these, but on the rare occasion you take a crappy iPhone picture, they can do a lot to help it look better. The one I use the most is Instagram.

There is a lot more to my system than just my phone, but as far as keeping up with things on the go, nothing has helped like it has.