If you were only allowed one item of technology, apart from a decent camera, it would have to be an Android tablet or an iPad. Smartphones can stand in for tablets, but doing any serious work on their small screens can be a pain. A decent tablet can be like a digital Swiss Army knife. It will give you the Internet, email and your favourite social networking site but it can also act as your phone (using the Skype app), your camera, your music player, your e-book reader, your personal cinema for those long night ferry trips, your radio, your map, your GPS satnav and much more.
A mobile phone is essential if you plan to do any hiking just in case of emergencies.
Depending on your home mobile contract, you may get free or cheap data and voice calls while in Greece. If not, two mobiles would provide you with the flexibility to put your home SIM in one and the Greek SIM in the other. If only one of them is a smartphone, it’s best to use the Greek SIM in the smartphone. It’s also possible to buy very cheap smartphones that take two SIM cards.
The winning combo of a tablet and a smartphone gives you the freedom to access the Internet anywhere there’s a mobile signal. Most smartphones can be configured to act as a personal WiFi hotspot so that you can connect your tablet to your phone’s WiFi hotspot when free WiFi is not available; the personal hotspot uses the phone’s mobile data allowance to provide your tablet with Internet access.
If you’re planning on catching up on your reading while soaking up the sun on an idyllic Aegean beach, an e-reader, such as a Kindle or Kobo that can be read in bright sunlight, will save you lugging around a pile of paperbacks.
Keeping all your battery-driven devices charged is a major operation, especially in rooms with just one mains electricity socket. You should certainly ditch the idea of taking all your USB chargers and opt for a single charger providing at least 4 USB charging ports with sufficient power for all your devices to be charged at once. A rechargeable battery pack is useful for emergency charging when mains electricity is unavailable.