GPS for bike rides?

maccauk62

Biggz wrote:

I think Endomondo runs on any Android or iPhone.

I currently run Strava on my Android phone and I'm worrying about battery life. I've only recently started cycling so my rides are short and battery life isn't a problem. That might be different if you cycle for a couple of hours.

Does anyone use Strava/Endomondo on a smart phone for a few hours without battery problems?

I always put the phone in aeroplane mode, my phone has rubbish battery life when everything is running, but a four hour ride using Strava in aeroplane mode only uses 20%

bazza333

Why buy a smartphone for £3-400? Got my Samsung Galaxy from Tescos for £15 per month with virtually unlimited services. As for battery life run it in flight mode as mentioned or just turn off 3G.

johnmcl7

Does anyone ride with the phone attached to the bike so you can see the display while riding to check miles/speed etc.? I quite fancy an S4 Active which would have a nice big display for on the bike and should be durable enough to take a few knocks (my main phone has a 5.3in display which I'm concerned makes it more vulnerable to damage when I have a fall) and would be handy elsewhere. I did look at the Sony Z as it's fairly cheap at the moment second hand but the display seems to suffer poor viewing angles which doesn't make it much use for outdoor viewing.

On the other hand a 5in phone might be too large to mount on a handlebar without risk of coming off and I don't know how good the GPS is, it's not bad on the Note.

John

YeehaaMcgee

A garmin would be cheaper than an S4 active. Or just a standard bike computer would be far, far cheaper still.

johnmcl7

YeehaaMcgee wrote:

A garmin would be cheaper than an S4 active. Or just a standard bike computer would be far, far cheaper still.

It was an Edge 800 I was looking at as I'd like navigational help as well, the cost of the base unit plus maps is not that cheap and far less functional than the likes of the S4 Active which would mean I wouldn't need to take a phone as well. My concern is more that it's not going to be practical to mount a larger device on the handlebars particularly on the mountain bike where the ride is rougher.

John

mmmcheese

finally made the jump to a smart phone earlier this year samsung galaxy I9000 (the 1st galaxy). Bought the phone for 80 quid off ebay, then got giffgaff sim card and set up automated top-ups.

check it out, its not for everyone as its online only but does run on the o2 network.

If you use the link you get an extra £5 when you 1st top up

http://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/mmmcheese

larkim

sofaboy73 wrote:

if you are wanting it for navigation purposes i would suggest getting a dedicated GPS unit. Like most things that are designed for a specific purpose , they will work better than an app on a smart phone, however the accuracy of them is far superior and i would never really on a smart phone for navigation 'off road'.

I can't help but disagree with this. The GPS chips in phones these days are as accurate as the GPS chip found in the consumer grade hand-held GPS's. Certainly for the purposes of knowing where you are to within a practical margin of error (I would say that something that places you to the nearest 10m would be as good as you would ever need in the real world, even if stranded up on the moors) they are all as good as each other. Knowing precisely where you are of course is no substitute for not looking around you and seeing hazards like sheer cliff faces etc etc!!

The difference between a phone GPS and, say, a Garmin GPS is that the battery in the Garmin will last a whole load longer, and is most likely replaceable (i.e. generally 2 x AA batteries).

This weekend I was out with SWMBO on a walk. She was carrying the map and the compass (and she is a competent map reader, ex girl guide, you know the sort!). She couldn't pin down where we were. Out popped my phone, which gave me an OS grid reference for where we were. Pinpointed immediately on the map. I don't know of any map and compass which can do that for you with the degree of certainty that a GPS can. (I do also not know of a phone or GPS unit that can still work when all the batteries are dead too, so I appreciate that aspect).

Matt

yearofthegoat

GPS units will pee all over phones in the aerial department. My android phone takes a good 10 minutes to pick up the satellites. My Garmin GPS does it in 30 seconds.

YeehaaMcgee

My HTC does it damn well near instantaneously. Even faster than my Garmin.

yearofthegoat

Mine's a Galaxy S2 and using Google navigation took ages to locate. I was in the wife's car which doesn't have satnav built in like mine, so I got my 60CSx and it got going straight away. Outdoors is highly likely to be different of course, but I do notice GPS reception drops off on my phone under tree cover and in valleys, where the Garmin is still fine.

The other thing is I have a handlebar holder for the Garmin so I can see it and use it easily whilst riding. The phone stays safely tucked away so it doesn't get wet/muddy/damaged (the Garmin is rainproof) so I can be fairly sure it'll work as a phone if I need it.

larkim

My samsung phone picks up GPS almost instantly, partly because it (along with other phones) can use A-GPS too, which most garmin units don't use. A-GPS uses mobile phone "cells" to determine an approximate location quickly, which helps the satellite lock.

In fact, my old Garmin Etrex is much much slower to lock onto a satellite, and runners that I know with Garmin Forerunners etc all seem to have to wait an age before a lock is achieved.

The ONLY downsides of using a smartphone as a GPS are battery drain and exposure to the elements when compared to dedicated GPS units.

Their upsides, including syncing activities directly to services like strava, live map updates (providing you have a signal!), choice of user interfaces (Stava, SportsTracker, Endomondo, etc etc), plus many more, make them a great choice.

I've just bought a Huawei Y300 smartphone as a replacement phone for my wife's one which was water damaged. Dual core processor, android phone, GPS etc etc. £69. You can't buy a Garmin for that money - and its also a phone, camera, email client, web browser, spirit level (!), MP3 player etc etc.

Why would anyone buy a dedicated GPS unit?

Matt

97th choice

maccauk62 wrote:

Biggz wrote:

I think Endomondo runs on any Android or iPhone.

I currently run Strava on my Android phone and I'm worrying about battery life. I've only recently started cycling so my rides are short and battery life isn't a problem. That might be different if you cycle for a couple of hours.

Does anyone use Strava/Endomondo on a smart phone for a few hours without battery problems?

I always put the phone in aeroplane mode, my phone has rubbish battery life when everything is running, but a four hour ride using Strava in aeroplane mode only uses 20%

I've run strava and endomondo on my iphone5 for about four hours max and the charge went down by around 15%

larkim

The biggest win / lose you'll get with battery life is whether you leave the screen on or not. But it does also make sense to turn off other things you might not need whilst riding - bluetooth, wifi, syncing - if you are using a phone.

I also carry a battery pack like this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet%C2%AE-7 ... ah+tecknet) which will charge my phone 3 or 4 times over whilst I'm out and about using my phone as GPS device if I am out for the whole day and expect to drain the battery. Never need to worry about running flat!

Matt

sofaboy73

larkim wrote:

Why would anyone buy a dedicated GPS unit?

Matt

better battery life / more flexible - many run on AA's which are easy to pick up anywhere in between multi day trips / or carry couple of extra spares.
Better accuracy - i note your previous comment, but don't agree (normally my garmin will be running off 7-10 sattelites rather than 3-4 on a phone chip). phone gps is ok, but if i was in an emrgency situation (injured and need to get off mountain) i'd prefer to know excatly where i am reliabley everytime
Better signal - my gps will get a good lock even under really heavy tree cover / used in dense forrest, i've found phones gps can be very hit and miss in these stituations
More robust - waterproof / shock proof. tends to be wet & muddy outdoors and smart phones don't do well in those conditions. even if you put them in your pack in a dry bag, you've still got to get them out all the time which is a pain and still means they can get wet / damaged, drop it and you're probably knackered as well
Flexibility of mapping - most units can have differnet types / styles of mapping loaded in. personally i like the OS explorer series in the uk and the IGN maps when in the alps etc, not found a phone gps app where i can switch the mapping to what i want (they may be out there though)

i thinks phone GPS' are ok, but i would never rely on one as my main nav aid when in the middle of nowhere for the reasons above.

as othere have said, can't beat a map & compass and you should always have one as a fall back

larkim

sofaboy73 wrote:

larkim wrote:

Why would anyone buy a dedicated GPS unit?

Matt

sofaboy73 wrote:

better battery life / more flexible - many run on AA's which are easy to pick up anywhere in between multi day trips / or carry couple of extra spares.

Agree about the battery life.

sofaboy73 wrote:

Better accuracy - i note your previous comment, but don't agree (normally my garmin will be running off 7-10 sattelites rather than 3-4 on a phone chip). phone gps is ok, but if i was in an emrgency situation (injured and need to get off mountain) i'd prefer to know excatly where i am reliabley everytime

I don't doubt your experience, but mine is that the phone uses and sees exactly the same amount of satellites as my Garmin eTrex does, and locks on significantly quicker. Perhaps not all phones use the same GPS chips internally, so not all are created equally, but my experience disagrees with this.

sofaboy73 wrote:

Better signal - my gps will get a good lock even under really heavy tree cover / used in dense forrest, i've found phones gps can be very hit and miss in these stituations

This is where I have to disagree very strongly. I go "geocaching" in my spare time (a desperately sad activity I know!), and this relies on you using GPS to get to within a couple of feet of a location to find something. The location is almost always in somewhere where there is tree cover, building reflections, obstructions etc etc. My direct experience with finding over 700 of this locations is that my phone is much more likely to have and retain a good quality signal in these sorts of circumstances than my Garmin. That might be the fault of my Garmin, but my phone reliably gets me to a very close degree of accuracy very reliably. Again, perhaps some brands / implementations are better than others (I have heard that the iPhone in certain generations is quite poor), but my phone (currently a Samsung Galaxy S Advance) is fabulous at this.

sofaboy73 wrote:

More robust - waterproof / shock proof. tends to be wet & muddy outdoors and smart phones don't do well in those conditions. even if you put them in your pack in a dry bag, you've still got to get them out all the time which is a pain and still means they can get wet / damaged, drop it and you're probably knackered as well

Can't disagree with this.

sofaboy73 wrote:

Flexibility of mapping - most units can have differnet types / styles of mapping loaded in. personally i like the OS explorer series in the uk and the IGN maps when in the alps etc, not found a phone gps app where i can switch the mapping to what i want (they may be out there though)

I'm fairly certain phones are more flexible than dedicated units here. Apps like ViewRanger allow many different sources of map data, and I'm sure there are plenty of others.

I've not got any direct experience with particularly hi end GPSr devices, but with my involvement in the Geocaching world (which I suspect is the biggest recreational use of GPS that actually relies on navigating to very specific points) I can definitely say that phones are (and can be) trusted world wide to give accurate location data.

Matt

Matt

sofaboy73

@larkim - i suspect a lot of of the phone gps poor experiences i've had have been down to having an i-phone. the gps and mapping is fine for cities and road nav, but i personally would never trust an i-phone off road! interesting to hear your experiences of others being signifcantly better

i'm also a bugger for breaking phones, so introducing it to the wet, mud & rocks is just asking for trouble

larkim

Yes - Apple / Maps / GPS have something of a chequered history!! And you're quite right, mud, wet and rocks mixing with phones isn't a good combo!!

Matt