Best phone for gps?

Moominman2

Sorry of this is in the wrong place...

I'm getting an upgrade tomorrow and wish to use strava. I'm after a phone that is good for gps/ mapping.

I looked at the HTC One X but I don't have the hands of a giant, and the HTC One S but is a bit slow at times.

I don't really want an iPhone but tell me your experience with it and maybe it'll sway me.

Thanks
Luke

declan1

My dad has a One X. It is truly amazing, although as you said it is rather large. The iPhone was the beginning of the recent touch-screen revolution, and has the smoothest interface and in my opinion best design/build quality. If you're wanting to mount them to your bike they would all probably be too big, but for in your pocket it doesn't really matter.

dw300

Samsung Galaxy S2 works great with Strava. I assume the S3 would too.

snoopsmydogg

declan1 wrote:

My dad has a One X. It is truly amazing, although as you said it is rather large. The iPhone was the beginning of all touch-screen phones, and has the smoothest interface and in my opinion best design/build quality. If you're wanting to mount them to your bike they would all probably be too big, but for in your pocket it doesn't really matter.

beginning, really?



OP does your old phone have gps? if so would it not be worth using that in case of accident, soaking, dropping etc.

I am not a fan of the iphone, i had one, the wife has one but i am a much bigger fan of android. Samsung seem pretty good and the galaxy s3 is imo better than the iphone 4. main complaints on here about iphones seem to be the battery life (or lack of it) when using gps apps.

Gizmodo

If you can afford it I would seriously recommend getting a proper GPS enabled bike computer and leave your phone for making emergency calls. The last thing you want is a flat phone battery at the end of a long ride and then needing to make an emergency call.

GPS cycle computers like the Garmin Edge 20 and the Bryton Rider 20 start at about £80 with the current cash back offer from Garmin. http://www.garmin.com/uk/edge200cashback

If you can stretch a bit further the more expensive ones will give you HRM and Cadence data as well.

declan1

snoopsmydogg wrote:

declan1 wrote:

My dad has a One X. It is truly amazing, although as you said it is rather large. The iPhone was the beginning of all touch-screen phones, and has the smoothest interface and in my opinion best design/build quality. If you're wanting to mount them to your bike they would all probably be too big, but for in your pocket it doesn't really matter.

beginning, really?



OP does your old phone have gps? if so would it not be worth using that in case of accident, soaking, dropping etc.

I am not a fan of the iphone, i had one, the wife has one but i am a much bigger fan of android. Samsung seem pretty good and the galaxy s3 is imo better than the iphone 4. main complaints on here about iphones seem to be the battery life (or lack of it) when using gps apps.

You know what I mean....

Fixed it

alihisgreat

Don't be worried about buying into the new trend of massive phones

You really won't look back! I've had the Samsung Galaxy Nexus since February and its awesome. Great for strava -> Never looses GPS, always picks it up quickly and I'm not even using 50% of the battery on 4 hour rides.

In fact on that point... phones with bigger screens are likely to be better for GPS as the screen is a big battery hog.. so they have high capacity batteries to compensate.. and thus can get very good battery life in screen-off situations like GPS tracking.

Make sure you get one with a nice camera too -> being able to get half decent pictures is a bonus as you're going to be carrying a phone anyway for emergencies and GPS use.

d4evr

Can't recommend the Galaxy S3 highly enough, great phone!

Moominman2

Thanks for all the replies folks.

My current phone doesn't have gps so couldn't use it for any future rides.

I would love a garmin, but it's too early for me as I've just got back into cycling properly so want to wait it out until I know I'll use such a device regularly!

I agree with the preference of androids over iPhones. I have an iPod which is enough apple for me! The HTC one X would be great but I'm not prepared to spend £31 a month on a phone. As a student that's loads. £25 is still a lot but more do-able so I've looked at the HTC one s.

I'll check out the Samsung too!

Cheers
Luke

BlakeysFC

I got a Samsung Galaxy S3 in July after upgrading from an iPhone 4S, absolutely amazing phone (fastest on the market) and the GPS with Strava works superbly

Pigtail

You get cheaper deals on less well known phones, though I don't know how good they would be at Strava. Through a rather convoluted deal I've just got a xperia tivo, which is a budget smartphone, for my daughter for about £2 a month. My wife has a bigger xperia, which has been extremely good.

snoopsmydogg

samsung galaxy s2 currently on offer with t-mobile, 2000 mins, unltd texts and internet usage for £26pm

could be worth a look, dual core processor and not as big as the s3/one x if the size is an issue

d4evr

Tesco do great deals at times, always go into the store though as they will best their in online deals. They're doing the S2 for £20.50 pm.

chaos75

I've just got an HTC one x, it's brilliant. In terms of cost if your upgrading from an existing contract and they can't give you the package you want threaten to leave to another network by asking for your PAC. The telesales people will probably agree to send it or text it to you but (almost) guaranteed within 24 hours you'll get a call from either the "disconnection" or "retention" team who have much greater scope for giving discounts. I got mine for £26pm with all the minutes, text and internet I'll ever need and the phone was free. it's just a matter of calling their bluff IME. I've done this with my last two or three upgrades and it's always worked.

Mr Will

The Galaxy S3 has a huge battery which means GPS use makes less of a dent in it than it does to most others - 8+ hours of Strava use comfortably.

It's big, but you do get used to it and the thin profile means that it slips in a pocket easily enough.

Moominman2

Thanks everyone for the help.

I almost bought the HTC one X but then was told even though I could upgrade, because the deal was with another network, would have to pay the last month or 2 of my current one.

So with that in mind this is what Im thinking...

I'll take 'chaos' up on his advice! But, as I went through car phone warehouse, can I will do that?

Thanks
Luke

chaos75

Ring your network. Tell them what you want without being too unrealistic. If you've been with your network a while play on that, they really do work hard to keep your custom. I think it depends on your contract but they'll probably give you a date that is the earliest you can walk away without charge, usually a month before the end of your contract, if that's not yet tell them you'll call back on that date for your PAC and then do just that. they'll then either give you the deal or tell you they'll send the code, then wait for that call from "retentions". this has always worked for me (and then my other half rings the next day and gets exactly the same deal straight away just by saying "My husband got...")!
I would never use a shop to upgrade as they will only ever give you the deals that you see on the posters in store which are nowhere near as good as what you'll get by phoning them.

Good Luck

p.s. worst case scenario if they call your bluff and send the PAC code you don't have to use it you can say you've changed your mind and stay with them.

Moominman2

Nice one mate, I'll do that when my contract is up

Cheers
Luke

baldwin471

Galaxy S3. Without a doubt the best phone on the market. GPS is amazing as it has a barometer for enhanced signal. Have a look at buymobilephones.net. Very good deals on there lad.

Damian3.14

I bought an iphone 3gs on ebay for £120 and it's been great for strava. An extra battery pack helps. Also, I use giffgaff sim to keep costs down, I pay less than £10 per month and use it as much as I like. The gps on some android phones doesn't update often enough for strava to work well according to the strava website.

Moominman2

Nice one I'll check that site out and will think about buying an iPhone outright as thats a good idea!

Cheers
Luke

BlakeysFC

Damian3.14 wrote:

I bought an iphone 3gs on ebay for £120 and it's been great for strava. An extra battery pack helps. Also, I use giffgaff sim to keep costs down, I pay less than £10 per month and use it as much as I like. The gps on some android phones doesn't update often enough for strava to work well according to the strava website.

Probably older Gingerbread Android phones, the new Ice Cream Sandwich Android phones (HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S3 etc.) don't have this problem.

I've been using Strava religiously for tracking my rides and it always tracks my ride 100% down to the smallest detail.

Personally I wouldn't want to hassle of having to buy an extra battery pack and having pretty bad battery life like the iPhone 3GS has, the HTC One X and (even more so) the Samsung Galaxy S3 have absolutely sublime battery life and can happily run Strava for 8-10 hours with no problem whatsoever.

thescouselander

I have to say every HTC phone I've owned has had rubbish GPS - they always seem to take forever to lock on and lose the signal regularly. I'm not sure what the latest models are like but I, for one, will be avoiding HTC in the future. Of you go with an Android phone i'd recommend having a look at Samsung's offerings.

Damian3.14

Oddly I find the GPS pretty slow to lock on with most apps on the iphone, but Strava seems to know where it is straight away - no idea why there should be any difference. I've just had a replacement iPhone as a swap-repair from apple care and since then I've had more trouble with missing segments and bad tracking on rides, so maybe this phone needs to go back. I'm interested to hear that the S3 can run Strava for 8-10 hours - the 3GS gets nowhere near that, but with the battery pack it'll run for long enough for fairly full day rides.

Ec0

I have an iPhone 4s and use it with a bunch of GPS apps like Strava, Mapmyrun and a couple of others and the GPS locks on pretty much as soon as the app is loaded. I've never had a problem with battery life ever even when its been used heavily on car trips for ipod and navigation functions..

At Donington last year for the superbikes my iPhone wasn't charged for the entire weekend of normal and music use whereas my friends HTC was practically hooked to the car charger after day 1. He's had 2 now and when he switched to the iPhone he mentioned the battery life pretty quickly.

It may not last as long as the Samsung, but its no where near as big and its popularity ensures its going to be compatible with pretty much anything you want to use it with. Phones seem to be the type of things which people almost draw battle lines over but in all fairness at this end of the spectrum, you're going to get something good regardless of which option you take. Its kinda like which 4 grand bike to buy, they're all good, just pick what you prefer the look of.

meursault

I have Nokia Lumia 800. Win 7 os. Good battery life, good gps lock. Only downside is no direct upload to Strava, and Strava have no plans to support win 7 os either.

No problem though, upload automatically to Endomondo, which also has some cool features that Strava doesn't, like best times over distances, and pep talks, people can send you messages, that sound out while on ride.

Then download gps gpx file and copy to Strava.

Mr Will

Just to add to the battery debate; there are two ways of achieving a long battery life (when designing a phone) - either use power more efficiently or just give it a bigger battery.

The iPhone goes down the first of these routes, which is why it can achieve class leading real world battery life with only a 1219mAh capacity battery (3GS). The problem comes in when you use something that doesn't use power efficiently, in this case GPS, which can chomp through all 1219mAh pretty quickly.

The Galaxy S3 on the other hand takes the "big battery" route. It uses a lot more power in day to day use, but has a 2100mAh battery to cope with it's demands. This means that firing up the GPS makes less difference to the battery life and as a consequence can be run for a lot longer.

BlakeysFC

Ec0 wrote:

I have an iPhone 4s and use it with a bunch of GPS apps like Strava, Mapmyrun and a couple of others and the GPS locks on pretty much as soon as the app is loaded. I've never had a problem with battery life ever even when its been used heavily on car trips for ipod and navigation functions..

At Donington last year for the superbikes my iPhone wasn't charged for the entire weekend of normal and music use whereas my friends HTC was practically hooked to the car charger after day 1. He's had 2 now and when he switched to the iPhone he mentioned the battery life pretty quickly.

It may not last as long as the Samsung, but its no where near as big and its popularity ensures its going to be compatible with pretty much anything you want to use it with. Phones seem to be the type of things which people almost draw battle lines over but in all fairness at this end of the spectrum, you're going to get something good regardless of which option you take. Its kinda like which 4 grand bike to buy, they're all good, just pick what you prefer the look of.

HTC's are notoriously bad for their battery life, particularly the One X/One S which only have a 1800mAh/1650mAh battery's. A friend used to have an old HTC Desire and he was forever charging his battery, once/twice a day with moderate usage!

Personally I love the extra 1.2 inch screen on my Galaxy S 3 and the AMOLED screen, it makes watching films/tv shows and playing HD games on my phone amazing. The memory you can add to the S3 also helps as you can put any Micro-SD card in there (which go upto 128gb) so can pretty much have an endless supply of movies/TV shows/Music etc. along with an abundence of apps.

As for compatibility, Android's these days are on the same level as iOS devices really. The Apple Store gets games etc. first still and they are later developed for Android about 1/2 weeks later. All the major tracking apps Endomundo, Strava, MapMyRide etc. are all on the Google Play store and work fantastically well on my Galaxy S3 (I use Strava mainly as I love its accessibility compared to the others out there).

I switched from an iPhone 4S to my Galaxy S3, I was worried and thought I'd regret the decision (but didn't want to wait until late September for iPhone 5) but I absolutely love it and am extremely happy with my decision to go 'Droid in the end.

As for the GPS on my Galaxy S3, it works just as perfectly as the GPS did in my old iPhone 4S, haven't noticed any difference between the in GPS-terms, just noticed that the battery life is significantly better than my old iPhone 4s (which used to last about 10 hours full use) and about 1 day 6 hours (with low usage and turning it off at night and back on in the morning).

I used to love my iPhone to bits, and couldn't imagine ever getting a phone from another manufacturer, let alone going to the 'Dark-side' of Android. But here I am 3 months later, still loving and admiring my Galaxy S3.

P.S. The Galaxy S3 is FASTER and has a 0.8 inch bigger screen than the new iPhone 5

baldwin471

BlakeysFC wrote:

Ec0 wrote:

I have an iPhone 4s and use it with a bunch of GPS apps like Strava, Mapmyrun and a couple of others and the GPS locks on pretty much as soon as the app is loaded. I've never had a problem with battery life ever even when its been used heavily on car trips for ipod and navigation functions..

At Donington last year for the superbikes my iPhone wasn't charged for the entire weekend of normal and music use whereas my friends HTC was practically hooked to the car charger after day 1. He's had 2 now and when he switched to the iPhone he mentioned the battery life pretty quickly.

It may not last as long as the Samsung, but its no where near as big and its popularity ensures its going to be compatible with pretty much anything you want to use it with. Phones seem to be the type of things which people almost draw battle lines over but in all fairness at this end of the spectrum, you're going to get something good regardless of which option you take. Its kinda like which 4 grand bike to buy, they're all good, just pick what you prefer the look of.

HTC's are notoriously bad for their battery life, particularly the One X/One S which only have a 1800mAh/1650mAh battery's. A friend used to have an old HTC Desire and he was forever charging his battery, once/twice a day with moderate usage!

Personally I love the extra 1.2 inch screen on my Galaxy S 3 and the AMOLED screen, it makes watching films/tv shows and playing HD games on my phone amazing. The memory you can add to the S3 also helps as you can put any Micro-SD card in there (which go upto 128gb) so can pretty much have an endless supply of movies/TV shows/Music etc. along with an abundence of apps.

As for compatibility, Android's these days are on the same level as iOS devices really. The Apple Store gets games etc. first still and they are later developed for Android about 1/2 weeks later. All the major tracking apps Endomundo, Strava, MapMyRide etc. are all on the Google Play store and work fantastically well on my Galaxy S3 (I use Strava mainly as I love its accessibility compared to the others out there).

I switched from an iPhone 4S to my Galaxy S3, I was worried and thought I'd regret the decision (but didn't want to wait until late September for iPhone 5) but I absolutely love it and am extremely happy with my decision to go 'Droid in the end.

As for the GPS on my Galaxy S3, it works just as perfectly as the GPS did in my old iPhone 4S, haven't noticed any difference between the in GPS-terms, just noticed that the battery life is significantly better than my old iPhone 4s (which used to last about 10 hours full use) and about 1 day 6 hours (with low usage and turning it off at night and back on in the morning).

I used to love my iPhone to bits, and couldn't imagine ever getting a phone from another manufacturer, let alone going to the 'Dark-side' of Android. But here I am 3 months later, still loving and admiring my Galaxy S3.

P.S. The Galaxy S3 is FASTER and has a 0.8 inch bigger screen than the new iPhone 5

Not sure what you are on about with regards to the One x battery life, i find it very good (Not as good as my SGS3 though). Agreed on the other points. One X/SGS3 > iPhone 5

BlakeysFC

baldwin471 wrote:

BlakeysFC wrote:

Ec0 wrote:

I have an iPhone 4s and use it with a bunch of GPS apps like Strava, Mapmyrun and a couple of others and the GPS locks on pretty much as soon as the app is loaded. I've never had a problem with battery life ever even when its been used heavily on car trips for ipod and navigation functions..

At Donington last year for the superbikes my iPhone wasn't charged for the entire weekend of normal and music use whereas my friends HTC was practically hooked to the car charger after day 1. He's had 2 now and when he switched to the iPhone he mentioned the battery life pretty quickly.

It may not last as long as the Samsung, but its no where near as big and its popularity ensures its going to be compatible with pretty much anything you want to use it with. Phones seem to be the type of things which people almost draw battle lines over but in all fairness at this end of the spectrum, you're going to get something good regardless of which option you take. Its kinda like which 4 grand bike to buy, they're all good, just pick what you prefer the look of.

HTC's are notoriously bad for their battery life, particularly the One X/One S which only have a 1800mAh/1650mAh battery's. A friend used to have an old HTC Desire and he was forever charging his battery, once/twice a day with moderate usage!

Personally I love the extra 1.2 inch screen on my Galaxy S 3 and the AMOLED screen, it makes watching films/tv shows and playing HD games on my phone amazing. The memory you can add to the S3 also helps as you can put any Micro-SD card in there (which go upto 128gb) so can pretty much have an endless supply of movies/TV shows/Music etc. along with an abundence of apps.

As for compatibility, Android's these days are on the same level as iOS devices really. The Apple Store gets games etc. first still and they are later developed for Android about 1/2 weeks later. All the major tracking apps Endomundo, Strava, MapMyRide etc. are all on the Google Play store and work fantastically well on my Galaxy S3 (I use Strava mainly as I love its accessibility compared to the others out there).

I switched from an iPhone 4S to my Galaxy S3, I was worried and thought I'd regret the decision (but didn't want to wait until late September for iPhone 5) but I absolutely love it and am extremely happy with my decision to go 'Droid in the end.

As for the GPS on my Galaxy S3, it works just as perfectly as the GPS did in my old iPhone 4S, haven't noticed any difference between the in GPS-terms, just noticed that the battery life is significantly better than my old iPhone 4s (which used to last about 10 hours full use) and about 1 day 6 hours (with low usage and turning it off at night and back on in the morning).

I used to love my iPhone to bits, and couldn't imagine ever getting a phone from another manufacturer, let alone going to the 'Dark-side' of Android. But here I am 3 months later, still loving and admiring my Galaxy S3.

P.S. The Galaxy S3 is FASTER and has a 0.8 inch bigger screen than the new iPhone 5

Not sure what you are on about with regards to the One x battery life, i find it very good (Not as good as my SGS3 though). Agreed on the other points. One X/SGS3 > iPhone 5

Yeh, sorry. Was just a generalisation on my part about the One X battery, just read a few reviews back when I was looking to get my SGS3 that the battery life wasn't that brilliant, never had any first hand experience with the One X, looks like a fantastic phone though and probably built with higher quality materials than my SGS3.

duckson

One S is better on battery than the One X (and faster generally) as it uses a new tech S4 chip rather than a power hungry old tech quad core.
Although i find the GPS on it shocking! Bought a Garmin Edge 500 for the bike and use the 500 for running with a wrist strap.