Is the iPhone 7 the death of Garmin ?

OTRveloClub

I am wondering if the iphone 7 will be the death of Garmin ?

The new battery giving longer operating time on the new iphone 7 along with water resistance is surely now becoming an issue for Garmin Bike computers ?

Is it time to get a iphone 7 and attach it to the Bars instead of a garmin device ?

What are your views ?"

slowmart

Certainly strava on my I phone works extremely well and will make me ask the question when my Garmin 800 gives up the ghost. The only downside is a crash and a £700 phone may prove the most expensive repair plus the inconvenience of not having a phone until a replacement arrives.

cookeeemonster

the new battery in the iphone will have to be radically better to replace the garmin. Will it be ok for a 10 hour ride with the screen on? And so on.

Phones have always been ok for commutes or shorter rides but for longer rides...especially ones where you may want a phone as a back up, not so much.

Grahamsjz

Much as I like Apple kit, I don't think the 7 is a replacement.

The increase in battery life is on average an hour, having Strava on, screen lit, attached via Bluetooth low energy to heart rate monitor, cadence sensor, speed sensor etc could mean battery usage will be at the higher end of the scale and after every ride your phone would need charging.

I also would also worry about shortening my phones components lifes by hanging it out the front of the bike in cold sleety mornings, never worry about my Garmin. Horses for courses.

(Besides I would miss my varia radar rear light).

mfin

There are loads of non apple phones that have batteries that last way longer than an iPhone and are waterproof. They aren't really eating into the Garmin market much and there's a lot more non-iPhones out there than iPhones.

Oh, also you are getting suckered in by the battery life of the iPhone 7, it isn't that much more to be significant, and it is only claimed anyway.

The iPhone 7 is also a poor effort by Apple just to tide them over to a full on anniversary release that will see them catch up or overtake the market a bit.

Anonymous

I will never buy an iPhone again. Many people like me don't want Apple products. I do still want a Garmin.

Eventually your iPhone will die. Apple even admit their products have short lifespans. Your garmin will continue to function well after your phone has given up the ghost. The thing is your iPhone's projected lifespan will never improve cos Apple want your money and want you to upgrade every year with another rehashed slightly faster slighty thinner phone which will become slow after filling up with bloatware and iOS updates stealing your useable storage space.

I on the other hand will keep on spinning happily with my dedicated Garmin

cookeeemonster

Maglia Rosa wrote:

I will never buy an iPhone again. Many people like me don't want Apple products. I do still want a Garmin.

Eventually your iPhone will die. Apple even admit their products have short lifespans. Your garmin will continue to function well after your phone has given up the ghost. The thing is your iPhone's projected lifespan will never improve cos Apple want your money and want you to upgrade every year with another rehashed slightly faster slighty thinner phone which will become slow after filling up with bloatware and iOS updates stealing your useable storage space.

I on the other hand will keep on spinning happily with my dedicated Garmin

its very possible to get 4 years out of a phone if you want (or longer), but yes the garmins will probably last longer than that.

However...garmin software and UI/usability is notoriously awful...with people crying out for a competitor to show them how its done (it hasn't happened yet, they utterly dominate the serious end of the market).

Apple on the other hand, make phones that are great to use (android phones can also be great - lets not get into that argument) and put garmin to shame on the usability front.

fenix

Its a phone. Its got a crap battery and way overpriced compared to a garmin.
Are you thinking people Will throw their garmins away and spend 700 quid ?

As has been said plenty of phones have better batteries and waterproof with GPS on. Much cheaper than Apple too

frisbee

Maglia Rosa wrote:

I will never buy an iPhone again. Many people like me don't want Apple products. I do still want a Garmin.

Eventually your iPhone will die. Apple even admit their products have short lifespans. Your garmin will continue to function well after your phone has given up the ghost. The thing is your iPhone's projected lifespan will never improve cos Apple want your money and want you to upgrade every year with another rehashed slightly faster slighty thinner phone which will become slow after filling up with bloatware and iOS updates stealing your useable storage space.

I on the other hand will keep on spinning happily with my dedicated Garmin

Rubbish, I've only just replaced my Iphone 4. With another Iphone. 5 1/2 years, battery life was still very good, web browser was a little slow but that was it. My Nexus 7 barely lasted 18 months before it was unusable...

Garmin on the other hand. The Wahoo Kickr is a very strong competitor already and they are constantly improving, the Stages one will have 25+ hours battery life and faster recording rates. Garmin need to get their act together, I'm looking for a GPS and the only benefit a Garmin offers me is routing.

SME

I have a Sony Xperia Z3 compact, about a year old now. The battery life has always been very good - sometimes I don't charge it for 2-3 days (they are the days I'm not trolling the internet or using GPS)

It has ANT+ aerial which means it picks up the data from my speed/cadence sensor. I use ipbike app to log my rides, and which can also act as a sat nav - .gpx files can be loaded into it and followed.

The screen is not on all the time - mostly I know where I'm going and it is just used as a 'route checker'. If I do a sportive the route is usually signed and I only refer to the phone if I haven't seen a marker for a while. This 'system' works for me. Some months back I done a 60 mile ride before going into work (late shift) and still had the use of the phone at work, plus logging my short commute home.

BUT, for all of that I have lately been considering a Garmin 520. I have had occasion where an accidental touch of a side button and a swipe of the screen can cause undesired effects like pausing the ride logging or such, especially if my phone is in the pocket. Also I still have an old Galaxy S2 I could use on a ride which is more 'expendable' should I have an 'off'.

So, for fun rides out locally, and/or if you're new to cycling and just getting serious about it, such a phone as above may be fine for a while. But as your cycling gets more serious with sportives in less local areas, you may start realising you probably need the right, and dedicated, tools for the job.

sniper68

I had problems with my iPhone 5 losing or part recording rides so bought a Garmin 800.Never looked back.I was recently in France and used the Garmin and iPhone as the lad wanted to upload his ride straight to Strava so his Grandad could see what he'd done.....My iPhone 6 only part recorded the ride!It auto-paused at the cafe stop and didn't restart.
iPhones and the Strava app are not reliable enough so I'll stick with my new Garmin 820.

myideal

I dont think the iPhone is going to threaten the cycle computer really. If you want to see a phone that is meant to do that look at the Moto x play ...but then your not all running on that, so can't be that good.

What Garmin need is to develop their segments and auto include all the rides from their computers on to the system. They have a massive potential data range that really could do what Strava does, only instantly , but they are now having to make kit that basically works with a 3rd party, at the expense of what could be developments to their own system.

As someone pointed out, what is needed is competition in this market. You need someone like Bryton to develop something cheap that uses Android, but then will sync perfectly with your phone. It will pull off Google maps nav, live tracking of other riders near you, instant segment data, maybe even something that counts you into sprint sections and then gives you the target time etc.

I think the future needs to be better links between the computer and the phone. Not one replacing the other.

Anonymous

frisbee wrote:

Maglia Rosa wrote:

I will never buy an iPhone again. Many people like me don't want Apple products. I do still want a Garmin.

Eventually your iPhone will die. Apple even admit their products have short lifespans. Your garmin will continue to function well after your phone has given up the ghost. The thing is your iPhone's projected lifespan will never improve cos Apple want your money and want you to upgrade every year with another rehashed slightly faster slighty thinner phone which will become slow after filling up with bloatware and iOS updates stealing your useable storage space.

I on the other hand will keep on spinning happily with my dedicated Garmin

Rubbish, I've only just replaced my Iphone 4. With another Iphone. 5 1/2 years, battery life was still very good, web browser was a little slow but that was it. My Nexus 7 barely lasted 18 months before it was unusable...

Garmin on the other hand. The Wahoo Kickr is a very strong competitor already and they are constantly improving, the Stages one will have 25+ hours battery life and faster recording rates. Garmin need to get their act together, I'm looking for a GPS and the only benefit a Garmin offers me is routing.

Believe it or not, you confirm everything I say even if you call it rubbish. Your phone still didn't outlast the garmin. The phone tries to do a lot of things pretty good. The garmin does one thing very very well. My Edge 500 is still going strong. Doing the job it was designed to do. It doesn't need updating ( the odd firmware update is more for bug fixes and sat data) It has no external factors dictating its usability. Software updates on phones need to keep up with software advanced. Data protocols. More complex programmes. I'm sure you are chuffed your phone lasted nearly 6 years but I knowfor a fact there will be plenty of apps that you couldn't download cos the operating system won't support it. The memory and processor are too slow. Its not just its ability to switch on and do what it was doing yesterday. Its becoming defunct. Even updatesto Strava will stop being released for it so not rubbish at all

meanredspider

As much as I'd like to see Garmin given a kicking, phones still have some way to go to become better than the dedicated devices they emulate. GPS positioning (especially dynamically) isn't as good and altititude is even further off (compare a phone's profile of a bridge like the Kessock bridge, where you can see the profile, with a dedicated device and it becomes really apparent). Strava segments done with iPhones are notoriously unreliable. Phones are catching up with dedicated devices (cameras, for instance, get better on every release) and Garmin devices are increasingly relying on phones for features (tracking, weather, etc) so it's only a matter of time. I can't wait.

noodleman

The iPhone won't dent Garmin sales but I think Wahoo are definitely going to shake them up a bit. The Elemnt is a fantastic bit of kit with some great unique features and a customer service that makes garmin look like the new guys rather than the established company.
I've owned four garmin products to date and the edge 500 is the only one that's been problem free. Phone's are too big, too expensive and will never give the battery life most cyclists need on a longer rides and still have power if you need to phone someone at the end. I'm more than happy with my Wahoo Elemnt and imagine many people buy garmin's for the same reason lots of people used to buy iphones, because everyone else had one.

fat daddy

I have had an iphone ... I have an Iphone now .... I will have an iphone in the future

No way I am strapping it to the front of the bike though ... I like the ham fisted approach of wet winter gloves, dropping the gps, forgetting to take it off the bike, crashing the bike, using my tongue to clean the screen, tossing it across the "drop off café" to show my mates my descent, dropping it again, etc etc etc.

the iphone wont be the death of garmin .... Garmin however will be the death of garmin ... I got well and truly fed up with the unreliable painfull to use U,I the touchscreen issues and the inability to see it in sunlight. ...... so bought a Wahoo elemnt .. blooming marvellous device, looks dated, but by jingo does it do what its meant to with ease. Infact the one thing I don't like about it is its so simple to set up and change setings, that I now don't need to as its running perfectly, where as the garmin I could spend an evening trying to find the right settings and apply them

Pituophis

I already have a Garmin and a phone, which both work perfectly at a fraction of the cost of an iphone.
Why would I ever want to buy an iphone?

markhewitt1978

OTRveloClub wrote:

I am wondering if the iphone 7 will be the death of Garmin ?

The new battery giving longer operating time on the new iphone 7 along with water resistance is surely now becoming an issue for Garmin Bike computers ?

Is it time to get a iphone 7 and attach it to the Bars instead of a garmin device ?

What are your views ?"

We do this topic every day, and the answer is still no . The screen on the iPhone 7 is not vastly different from the screen on my iPhone 6, and the battery is the same as the one on my iPhone 6 - with just some processor efficiencies.

I tried using my iPhone in quadlock case for a while, and once you get over that it looks rediculous, it does work. However you soon hit problems, the screen is just very hard to see under direct sunlight, unless you turn the brightness right up - but then the glare from the phone is super distracting, especially if you then go under trees etc. With my ELEMNT the LCD screen is viewable just as well under blazing sun as shade, it's readable all the time.

The battery life just isn't good enough. Rides I tried were having the battery on 20% and flagging warnings after 3 hours - with my ELEMNT I did a 7hr30min ride and took only 50% of the battery.

Plus while the ELEMNT doesn't have the best styling, it looks a hell of a lot better on the bike than my iPhone.

So to answer your question, no. But it's not all about Garmin either

markhewitt1978

Maglia Rosa wrote:

I will never buy an iPhone again. Many people like me don't want Apple products. I do still want a Garmin.

Eventually your iPhone will die. Apple even admit their products have short lifespans. Your garmin will continue to function well after your phone has given up the ghost. The thing is your iPhone's projected lifespan will never improve cos Apple want your money and want you to upgrade every year with another rehashed slightly faster slighty thinner phone which will become slow after filling up with bloatware and iOS updates stealing your useable storage space.

I on the other hand will keep on spinning happily with my dedicated Garmin

It's off topic, but I can't agree with this at all. Yes; there's a phone out every year, but if you look at the likes of OS releases Apple are one of the few that continue to support old devices many years after they're released, unlike others which seem to abandon their offerings as soon as they come out (I remember Nokia!). iOS 10 is out tomorrow and it still supports the iPhone 5 which was released in 2012, and that's being supported with the latest OS, they'll of course continue to function even after that's dropped.

The main problem with iPhones is the battery, it wears out before anything else, and if you're going to keep your iPhone beyond say 2 years it'll likely need replacing.

But of course you're quite right, the expected lifespan of a phone is still going to be way less than a cycle computer as it's a single purpose device and rightly so.

pblakeney

No.
Moving on.....

StillGoing

In a word, NO!

Like others, I have had an iphone for the past 3 upgrades, but never again. They are a gimmick and don't do some of the basic things you'd expect such as RSAP meaning my phone doesn't connect to my car correctly requiring me to use the inferior antenna of the phone over the cars phone antenna and also not receive messages and updates to the sat nav and traffic warning. Icloud works with Android allowing access to documents stored on the iMac so no need for iPhone anymore.

A Garmin can be a big outlay. But they are robust units compared to a smart phone and having crashed and had my old 810 hurtle through the air landing some feet away, can vouch that it still worked afterwards. I'd like to see a smart phone manage that. Phones belong in pockets and not stuck on the bars like an ugly tablet. The battery life of a smart phone is nowhere near as good as Garmin either and lets be serious, the phone is you immediate option in an emergency. Do you really want to risk no battery power to make that call should you need to?

bendertherobot

Which bit of the 7 does the op think is somehow revolutionary?

lostboysaint

PBlakeney wrote:

No.
Moving on.....

That.

diamonddog

I don't have an iPhone of any kind so no the 7 will never replace my Garmin, my phone is used mainly as a phone.

markhewitt1978

bendertherobot wrote:

Which bit of the 7 does the op think is somehow revolutionary?

He said the waterproofing, which is nice enough, and the bettery battery life, which is marginal at best. Neither of which changes the situation much.

bendertherobot

markhewitt1978 wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Which bit of the 7 does the op think is somehow revolutionary?

He said the waterproofing, which is nice enough, and the bettery battery life, which is marginal at best. Neither of which changes the situation much.

But that applies to the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge both of which have better waterproofing because they can go a tiny bit deeper in a pool for 30 minutes. The battery on the iPhone 7 is likely not as good (but Apple do power differently). So I could start an S7 thread. It would be silly because all the same arguments apply. I've taken Samsung only but many manufacturers have always offered much of what Apple trumpet as new. Even Cycling Weekly ran an iPhone 7 advertorial last week.

philbar72

if you do more than 3 hours on a ride, an iphone won't suit and its GPS is pretty much worse than a Garmins. the 7 looks a great idea, but not for someone like me that does 5-6 hour long weekend rides.

markhewitt1978

philbar72 wrote:

if you do more than 3 hours on a ride, an iphone won't suit and its GPS is pretty much worse than a Garmins. the 7 looks a great idea, but not for someone like me that does 5-6 hour long weekend rides.

I'd prefer to have two phones, a 5.5" iPhone for home and a 4" iPhone for cycling, but even if I could afford that, it would mean swapping SIMs around, which surprisingly is still a thing.

supermurph09

Madness to think this. I have an iphone 6+, I'm looking to get the 7, not a chance in hell would I be strapping that on my bike. My Garmin Edge 500 is designed to be sat out front in all weathers, it'll do everything you need for 10% of the cost.

ddraver

As always apple are about 5 years behind Samsung or htc and I have nt seen them replacing any Garmins

So no...

(there is a market for some sort of phone companion tthat would do Calls, Texts, music and maybe basic internet that fits in a jersey pocket properly and runs off of your normal phone somehow...)

fat daddy

bendertherobot wrote:

But that applies to the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge both of which have better waterproofing .

he could also have not singled out Garmin, as there other bike GPS dvices as well ie Wahoo, Mio, etc ...

I guess we need about 20 threads o cover all the possibilities ie

s7 + garmin
s7 + wahoo
s7 + mio
i7 + garmin
i7 + .... blah

Just incase someone takes offence to their choice of device not being mentioned