Smartphone GPS-enabled cycling apps

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  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    Bar Shaker wrote:
    The Motion X terrain maps are excellent, showing footpaths, contours, lakes and rivers.
    That's what I like about Open Street Map / Open Cycle Map (which from your screenshot appears to be what it's using). I prefer it to Google as (in the absence of expensive OS maps) they have detail off the road where Google doesn't, and they include not only official footpaths but also people add singletrack in some places.
    Motion X is battery hungry as it is constantly polling the GPS chip. It will eat a full battery in about 3 hours. I have an external battery and a 'dock extender' lead which gives me 6-8 hours use of Motion X for longer rides.
    Problem here is more down to the phone hardware or core OS more than software. This is where Nokia did better than the competition. Their software may have been awful, but they know how to make their hardware and make it efficient. Apple in particular still have a lot to learn about battery performance and I'm quite shocked how their GPS chips suck the battery. I've been happy tracking for an entire day when skiing and still plenty of battery left in the evening.

    That said, it will have to be seen what the power hungry Windows Phone software does to Nokia hardware! Symbian was always designed for very low power use. Its days are numbered though now.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    What makes you think the windows phone software is a particularly heavy battery user?
    I've regularly used the GPS on mine all day without a problem.
  • gruffdris
    gruffdris Posts: 28
    Anyone out there on andriod should give orux maps a try http://www.oruxmaps.com/index_en.html

    You can customize pretty much every menu, save maps before hand on the pc or cache (ordance survey, open street cycle, etc) load gpx tracks. good stat feedback, compatible with hrm and its free

    Allows upload to everytrail, mapmytracks or export .gpx

    Not 100% on battery usage but with the maps being preloaded its just gps your choice on how often. Had 4hours usage with music playing though headphones and still 40%+ battery on my wildfire
    Spes rockhopper 09 FCN 9
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    To get any sort of accuracy, any software will have to use the GPS pretty much constantly.
  • joshtp
    joshtp Posts: 3,966
    I use Google My Tracks. Really good IMO. Sometimes Run Keeper, that's pretty good too. Have used Sports tracker, endomondo and a few others too, all good. But i like My tracks, it's real simple and provides loads of data.


    Softrace is fun for training too, and there are a few cool map apps I use too...
    I like bikes and stuff

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