iPhone vs dedicated hand held unit

Schattenjager

Expedition Leader
I have been on an exhaustive search for capable, easily used, highly accurate, and durable handheld GPS. I have narrowed it down to the likes of the Garmin offerings, primarily the 62stc, the Montana and the Monterra.

I had a 60csx and loved everything about it but as time went on and touch screens became the ubiquitous interface, it quickly showed its age. The 62 is a huge step up in screen and capabilities, but button driven nonetheless.

Enter the Montana. Beautiful large glove friendly touch screen, proven GPS chipset, easy to use and what I thought was a useless camera. Then I saw I a friend pull up a cool pic of a waterfall and with a button press it fired up a navigation route to the place. Pretty cool way to sort favorites, eh?

The Monterra is only a chipset away from being a smartphone. I am not a fan of Android. Nothing against those who are - its just not my gig. So there is a new culture to learn with it and the apps. Radio feature and torch are perfect additions to a nav unit. But for the price!

Then there is the iPhone. The kindly host of this site, Scot Brady, favored his iPhone last I recall and I must agree. It would seem that, in the correct case, the iphone could do EVERYTHING (save the radio bit) these units do and do it just as well. I am not a fan of the complexity in finding, scaling and adding maps to iOS apps, but that too may have changed since I last looked into it. I'm learning photography, a new camera, French and German right now. Adding a deep well of niche gps info to my lexicon is not what I want. But again, maybe this has improved too. With 64 gig of memory, I could chart the globe. When in WiFi or cell coverage, I could look up, share and plan the next step with one device.

So, what am I missing? How does Garmin still have any market share unless it is offering something that no one else - iPhone and Android included - has?
 

Darwin

Explorer
I am in the same boat. Curious to here some of the responses. I know this can be a hotly debated topic.
 

Cole

Expedition Leader
I suppose some of it depends on how you travel.

While the iPhone is plenty capable as a GPS device, it's also your lifeline for communications!! Meaning that if it gets lost or damaged then you no longer have a phone to call 911 or anyone else with.

Dedicated GPS devices tend to be more rugged then even the best iPhone case. If you slip and fall off that waterfall while looking at it and it vanished down the river, you may still have a good phone packed away safely in a pack.

I've used all of them, Android, IOS, Garmin Montana and now a Monterra on my motorcycle for extended off road travel. The Garmin devices work much better on the bike in the sun/rain. Glove friendly, don't overheat in the sun, easily daylight readable screen and I can leave them locked to the bike or car and use my phone for other things.


I got one phone wet by accident on a trip and spent the next 9 days with no phone, no GPS, nothing! Bought a dedicated GPS after that and packed my phone away in a safer spot!


Garmin Montana mounted to a KTM 950 ADV for a 18k mile 6 month trip. Has since been changed to a Monterra in the same mount.(easier to see than this image makes it out to be)

7983031592_8d8aed71ba_b_d.jpg
 
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Idahoan

Adventurer
I have the Garmin app on my iPhone 5. For my purposes it works great. I find it easy to operate.
 

M.Bas

Adventurer
During a trip this summer I encountered a group with mixed gps devices (garmin, iphone, android, pretty much every type was present). On the peak we compared tracking data, just for fun.
All dedicated gps devices showed similar data regarding, moving/stopped times, avg speed, odometer, altitude, etc. The phones on the other hand.... one of the iphones showed 300m difference in altitude and another phone showed half the distance we had actually travelled. Just to name a few things. Phone gpses are seriously inacurate when compared to dedicated gps devices.
 

highdesertranger

Adventurer
m bas is right on. also if you are out of cell range it seems to take the phones along time to get a lock, using precious battery power. then you can't just leave the phone on because it starts searching for a cell signal killing the batt. my buddy said there was a way to stop this but why bother since I had my garmin. highdesertranger
 

lugueto

Adventurer
Ive had my 62st basically since they came out. I've used it for everything but mostly use it on my truck during trips. For reference, I've used it for hiking, paragliding, boating, biking, you name it.

I have an underground parking, and the thing does get a signal there. Always accurate, and coming from GPSMAP 60csx and 496 it is user friendly. The screen is considered to be on the small side but I've never had trouble quickly reading it while driving.

My dad recently acquired a Montana, used for the same purposes. It is a lot bigger than I though it would be, basically the same features as the 62 series but with a touchscreen and more "Nuvi-esque" interface. I would have either, but it being touchscreen isn't really a selling point for me.

I love my 62st, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a dedicated handheld GPS. Althoug I have less experience with the Montana, I would recommend it just as well.

I think the GPS on my phone is only used while in the city. When out on the road my phone is used for calling only. When off road my phone is either on photo duty or is off and in the glove box.
 

libarata

Expedition Leader
For the city dweller, an iPhone/tablet makes a great navigation item, but once you leave the "incorporated" areas, you are better served by a dedicated, and much more rugged piece of equipment. If you want GPS, go for real GPS, not terrestrial triangulation via cell towers.
 

pdxfrogdog

Adventurer
I've been really happy using an iPhone 5s as my primary GPS device. The iPhone (since 4s) contains both GPS and GLONASS receivers, which helps it acquire a decent fix (± 10m) really quickly. Quite similar in speed and performance to what a dedicated GPS with a WAAS signal can achieve. Reliance on A-GPS and cell coverage is not a meaningful limitation of these devices anymore and represents a dated understanding of the technology.

Ultimately is the Garmin more accurate? Maybe a bit... and maybe that is all important to you. You should get a read on how accurate and/or current the vendor provided maps and data loaded onto your Garmin are. You might be disappointed with what you find.

In my mind, what tips the advantage towards smartphones is superior software and access to more types of maps and data. I use Gaia GPS on the iPhone (also available for android) and it is wonderful. Gaia gives me cloud access to continental and/or global maps from the USGS, USFS, Google, Mapbox, NOAA, FAA and OSM (open street maps). Coverage obviously depends on the mapping provider and their area of interest or responsibility, but I can take them all off-line for use in the wilderness. I can easily load my own maps, tracks, routes and waypoints. Additional maps or updated data can be quite a bit more tricky with a Garmin device where they have a strong incentive to lock you into their data offerings and sell you updates.

The last point I'll make is that I keep my iPhone more up to data from a hardware perspective than I would with a dedicated GPS. I can justify this because it serves many purposes (phone, messaging device, computer, entertainment, etc). New this year, the iPhone 6 and 6+ include a barometric altimeter to more accurately determine elevation. That is the same type of sensor that dedicated GPS devices use to improve Z measures. I'll probably have 3 generations of iPhone during the same time period that I would own a dedicated GPS. That leaves plenty of room for incremental improvement.

On the durability and power side, these are areas where a dedicated unit is truly better. You can however mitigate with ruggedized case and auxiliary power... particularly if part of your outing is vehicle dependent.
 
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Schattenjager

Expedition Leader
thanks for the thoughtful replies. pdxfrogdog did us the huge favor of suggesting Gaia GPS - think I'll put the money saved from not buying a dedicated GPS toward fuel.
 

robgendreau

Explorer
The question isn't phone vs dedicated GPS. These days everyone but Luddites are gonna have a GPS smartphone. The question is whether you need a GPS in addition for a fix, mapping and/or communication. Or a more rugged or glove usable container. Even with my dedicated GPS units I need a smartphone because it is so superior in use of maps and doing other nav stuff, like geocoding photos or POIs.
 

Scott Brady

Founder
The smartphone is just not there yet. I cannot get reliable tracking from any app to date. As a result, I often use the smartphone or small tablet for navigation (great maps) and a small Garmin just to make sure the track logs properly, and as a backup unit. Of course, my needs might be different. I really want to have a clean track for reference and future content.
 

Cole

Expedition Leader
As stated before. One on the primary purposes of a dedicated GPS is to keep your sole communications device out of harms way.
 

goodtimes

Expedition Poseur
The smartphone is just not there yet. I cannot get reliable tracking from any app to date. As a result, I often use the smartphone or small tablet for navigation (great maps) and a small Garmin just to make sure the track logs properly, and as a backup unit. Of course, my needs might be different. I really want to have a clean track for reference and future content.

Interesting - are you consistently missing the same specific bits of information (IE: heavy truncation), or is every track log missing different information?

I'm almost exclusively using an iPhone now - but to be honest, 95% of that is in-town. When I'm out in the boonies, I either have a good idea about where I'm going, or I wander around lost until I find it.
 

dstn2bdoa

Adventurer
When my wife updated to the iPhone 5s I confiscated her old 4s, put an otter box on it, wiped it clean, turned off the cellular and loaded Gaia. It's either in the 4x4 or on the DRZ, both with charging capabilities and they work great. I'll take it on day hikes, but wouldn't take backpacking or hunting, because of the shorter battery life and lack of bullet proof durability that something like a 62 would have.

A 62 or montana would be great, but for the price of the Gaia app, I have a competent device that suits my needs.

Slightly off topic, I got the elf GPS dongle for my I pad. We used it on the Mojave Rd recently. Having such a large screen to navigate from was great. At every stop, my buddy would walk up to my rig with his Oregon and they were spot on every time. And being able to switch between maps is great.
 

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