Satnav for Bike and Car!!
kevinharley
Posts: 554
I'm a bit of a techno luddite ... I don't have a smartphone, or a gps device, or a satnav for the car ... I use my phone for ringing and texting, and maps to find my way around ... but I'm starting to feel I'm being left behind, and may be missing out on the advantages of "modern technology"!
Having recently used a Tomtom in the car, I'm being persuaded of the benefits of not having to rely on a muddy, dog-eared, page-shedding road atlas kicking around in the passenger's footwell ... and my parents have offered to buy me one (a satnav) for xmas ... and I'm inclined to say "Yes, ok then"!
But, before they nip down halfords to buy a (presumably poorly set-up, by the Saturday lad who doesn't know his a*se from his elbow
) Tom Tom or the like, I wondered whether there is an item that would be equally useful for both navigating in the car, and taking on the bike as a kind of cheap imitation of a garmin or such like.
Would I be able to download off-road routes onto a car-based satnav, as well as record my distance, altitude gain, speed etc? Or would a dedicated bike thingy be workable in the car? Would a smartphone fullfil either / both functions?
As ever, I'm on a tight budget - £50-£100 (for a dual purpose bike/car satnav), or £15 per month contract smartphone, so any advice about what, if anything, would fit the bill??
Having recently used a Tomtom in the car, I'm being persuaded of the benefits of not having to rely on a muddy, dog-eared, page-shedding road atlas kicking around in the passenger's footwell ... and my parents have offered to buy me one (a satnav) for xmas ... and I'm inclined to say "Yes, ok then"!
But, before they nip down halfords to buy a (presumably poorly set-up, by the Saturday lad who doesn't know his a*se from his elbow
) Tom Tom or the like, I wondered whether there is an item that would be equally useful for both navigating in the car, and taking on the bike as a kind of cheap imitation of a garmin or such like.Would I be able to download off-road routes onto a car-based satnav, as well as record my distance, altitude gain, speed etc? Or would a dedicated bike thingy be workable in the car? Would a smartphone fullfil either / both functions?
As ever, I'm on a tight budget - £50-£100 (for a dual purpose bike/car satnav), or £15 per month contract smartphone, so any advice about what, if anything, would fit the bill??
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I use my iPhone (other smartphones will work too though) for both, with free (ish) apps. Navfree for sat nav, and trails for on the bike. Both work great.A Flock of Birds
+ some other bikes.0 -
Thanks - I'm not in the market (haven't got the money) for an iphone, so it would have to be a (much) cheaper imitation. Do you have to have your smartphone connected to the web all the time you are using it for navigation (car and bike), and if so, what is the impact on data allowance and battery runtime?0
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Thats the cool thing about the two apps, navfree is full GPS downloaded to the phone. Takes an age to install, but once done, its full UK mapping on the phone. Trails you can download maps in advance over wifi, and save them to the phone. Yes you need to think about it ahead of time, but once its done its done for ever. Once the maps are downloaded, both only run GPS, and need no data, so that means the battery life is pretty good and of course if your out riding data tends to be hopeless anyway. You're best off having a charger in the car off the 12v, but on the bike you get a good few hours usage on an iphone, so probably even better on the Android devices. The other nice thing about trails is that you can manually import other peoples GPXs, or from Everytrail or Bikely from the app, and run them as ghost trails to follow.A Flock of Birds
+ some other bikes.0 -
£15 p/m contract is what I'm on. Just renewed it and am awaiting delivery of a new Acer Liquid Z1 which will do all of what you want. We pay over the odds here on the IOM because it's a small captive market. You can get much better deals in the UK.
Pretty much any phone you get now will have access to some kind of app store, Ovi, or google marketplace, so you'll have the ability to download free apps to use with the inbuilt GPS for satnav and things like Strava, endomondo and trails.
Personally, I'd wait a couple of months for the new Google phone. That thing looks absolutely immense for the money, and is likely to be free even on cheap contracts (probably be tied in to a 24month one though).0 -
Cat With No Tail wrote:Personally, I'd wait a couple of months for the new Google phone. That thing looks absolutely immense for the money, and is likely to be free even on cheap contracts (probably be tied in to a 24month one though).
The new Google Nexus 4 (made by LG) is selling sim free for £240 via the google play store. Stick in a sim from the cheapest operator (probably GiffGaff) and you've got one of the best Android smartphones around, free to move to any network, for a complete bargain price.
Bear in mind that comparable (but arguably less well-specc'd phones) such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 still retail PAYG locked to a network for about £450, and you can see what a bargain that LG Nexus is!
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones ... -50009629/
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