I can certainly confirm that wifi and 3G coverage is nonexistent in many places where one really needs it, in the flight planning context.
I have just spent a week in a 5 star hotel where the wifi was barely usable (one had to sit near the door) and there was no 3G in the whole country (Jordan) that was accessible via roaming. Fortunately I was not flying there. Europe is only a bit better.
Any internet functionality must work over GPRS-only otherwise even a UK-only pilot will tear his hair out pretty soon. In the UK, and everywhere else in Europe, there is no 3G in 99% of the countryside. WIFI is mostly secured, unless one is willing to walk around residential areas where there are still plenty of unsecured access points. It is also very short range; you have to park yourself right outside the person's house
But you won't be doing flight planning there...
Citrix is an expensive server license even if the client is free, and it also requires a lot of expertise to set up. I run pc/anywhere (a similar functional product) and the port forwarding and VPN etc config for that is beyond me. But (in this context) a remote desktop product delivers nothing over running the same app locally. OK, it allows you to run PC apps on Apple products which would not otherwise run them, but that is basically just Jepp Flitestar/Flitemap and AFPEx, on an Ipad (neither would be usable on an Iphone). And a £300 laptop will run both of those, and everything else, perfectly, and it won't need any connectivity for the Jepp stuff... and AFPEx is not necessary because there are alternatives, e.g. EuroFPL and this works on a smartphone.
I am not sure what a remote desktop product would bring to any smartphone, because their screens are far too small to be usable with most traditional apps. I suppose one could just about run AFPEx on an Iphone in that way but what's the point?
What I was really getting at with my original post was carrying just
one device. Obviously if you carry a pile of stuff, like an Ipad plus a phone, then other things are possible. To carry an Ipad around you need a backpack, in which case why not just carry a small laptop? But being able to do the whole lot with just a phone is an attractive option.
Edit:
Printing can be done, very well in fact
I am "all ears". Where is the Print button? The only place where I have ever seen a Print feature is in a 3rd party app called Altamail, working only to a network-attached printer over wifi, and even then the result is total crap and unsuitable even for printing off a PDF approach plate. Will the new firmware wipe out all the config, or can it be applied without using Itunes to do a backup/restore?