Am I naive/crazy for wanting a Spark to use with only my iPhone, and not the remote control?

I want to bring it to the Caribbean to get some real simple aerial footage of beaches, waterfalls and maybe a town or countryside.

Traveling as light as possible and portability are the most important factors for me and I would love to pack without a separate RC (and have one less thing to charge every night, too).

Speed is definitely not an issue.  I would only want cinematic shots and would be using Tripod Mode and moving slowly.

I see the specs say the max range is 300 ft x 150 ft.  I assume those are best-case, but that approximate range doesn’t seem unreasonable for my needs (for ex, the tallest waterfall is 75 ft).  Any idea what I could reasonably and safely expect for a range?

How difficult is it to learn how to control the gimbal while flying with a smartphone?

Another concern would be flyaways, is that more likely when using a smartphone?

Thanks!

I haven't used my spark with the phone alone, so I can't really advise on that.
But if you worry about the RC, you don't have to charge it every night. I will last several flights.
You will definitey need more than 1 battery. One battery will fly only for about 12 min.
The RC you can get about at least 4 flights. I can say this, cause I have 4 batteries and I can fly those 4 batteries on a full cahrged RCe. Never checked exactly how many hrs you'll get with a fully charge RC.

Hmmm... I'd just follow the basic manual help with gestures. But I'd have the RC also... Read or view gesture controls. Let us know how that works.

Practice makes perfect I would say, Use your device or RC to control the AC on a safe surrounding till you build up your confidence level.

Rather not try learning flight at unknown territory/surrounding.