Cole
Expedition Leader
A Garmin Montana is FAR more useful on a motorcycle IMO! You can easily read the screen when riding, use it with gloves on easily, and it never overheats in the sun!
iPhone vs dedicated hand held unit
- Thread starter Schattenjager
- Start date
A Garmin Montana is FAR more useful on a motorcycle IMO! You can easily read the screen when riding, use it with gloves on easily, and it never overheats in the sun!
dstn2bdoa
Adventurer
Your totally correct, but I feel that the $400+ dollars I saved went to better use elsewhere. When cash cow shows up, I'll buy one for every vehicle. I spent $19 on the Gaia app, grabbed an old phone out of the drawer and haven't got lost yet...win!
robgendreau
Explorer
I can't say that my Android or iOS devices were much off from my Garmin dedicated units in tracking. But my Garmins are rather older. A key is reception. My iPhone outside gets a much better grab of sats than my Garmin in my van. And sampling and smoothing matters; my iPhone sometimes does a much better job of that than at least one of my Garmins. If you're not getting reliable tracking with a smartphone, something is wrong.
Here's a rather nice comparison of devices, although a bit dated: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/06/2011-sport-device-gps-accuracy-in-depth.html (I LOVE that some people make such an effort for us!). Executive summary: all of 'em are pretty darn close.
You'll see the iPhone went on a walkabout on one of them. Which brings up a point about measurements: sometimes it's a Good Thing when errors are that bad. Outliers that are easily discovered and discarded sometimes aren't as problematic as a persistent inaccuracy. And one also has to consider precision as opposed to accuracy. For most purposes of this forum, which is vehicle travel, I'd happily sacrifice precision for battery life. Indeed, I very only only intermittently need the GPS at all, since I'm following a road. The smartphones shine in this application because they often acquire a fix and show your position, either with GPS data or on a map, more quickly than many of the dedicated units. And fitting to the map, and the map's accuracy, are also factors. And the algorithms the software uses. There's a huge difference between say Gaia and the Olympus app I use for geolocation with my camera. The latter isn't optimized for making accurate tracks; it pretty clearly sacrifices that for battery life, since one often stops for a bit while taking photos. So the track is crap, but the photo locations are much more accurate (it would be horrible for navigation).
Rob
Here's a rather nice comparison of devices, although a bit dated: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/06/2011-sport-device-gps-accuracy-in-depth.html (I LOVE that some people make such an effort for us!). Executive summary: all of 'em are pretty darn close.
You'll see the iPhone went on a walkabout on one of them. Which brings up a point about measurements: sometimes it's a Good Thing when errors are that bad. Outliers that are easily discovered and discarded sometimes aren't as problematic as a persistent inaccuracy. And one also has to consider precision as opposed to accuracy. For most purposes of this forum, which is vehicle travel, I'd happily sacrifice precision for battery life. Indeed, I very only only intermittently need the GPS at all, since I'm following a road. The smartphones shine in this application because they often acquire a fix and show your position, either with GPS data or on a map, more quickly than many of the dedicated units. And fitting to the map, and the map's accuracy, are also factors. And the algorithms the software uses. There's a huge difference between say Gaia and the Olympus app I use for geolocation with my camera. The latter isn't optimized for making accurate tracks; it pretty clearly sacrifices that for battery life, since one often stops for a bit while taking photos. So the track is crap, but the photo locations are much more accurate (it would be horrible for navigation).
Rob
Mad Matt
Adventurer
I am using an old 1st gen 3G iPad + MotionX for both off-grid navigation (cached tiles) and to log/track my path. I have never seen any crazy discrepancies with the quality of my tracks. Sure tracks of been off by a few meters in landscapes that would challenge any GPS, but I haven't felt it was enough of an issue to justify spending a couple hundred dollars on a dedicated handheld GPS for redundancy purposes.
pluton
Adventurer
I've got a Montana, which I use in car/on dash and handheld hiking.
I also have an iPhone with Gaia and a whole bunch of maps on it.
I'd love to have a tablet with live tracking map display for car only....maybe someday when I feel rich.
The downside of the phone:
1. Battery life: If used continuously as a GPS, even with the juice pack plus on it, it's pathetic next to the Garmin. Also, I can put AA batts in the Garmin if need be.
2. The Garmin screen is readable in direct sunlight....and it saves power while doing it since you can shut off the screen backlight.
I also have an iPhone with Gaia and a whole bunch of maps on it.
I'd love to have a tablet with live tracking map display for car only....maybe someday when I feel rich.
The downside of the phone:
1. Battery life: If used continuously as a GPS, even with the juice pack plus on it, it's pathetic next to the Garmin. Also, I can put AA batts in the Garmin if need be.
2. The Garmin screen is readable in direct sunlight....and it saves power while doing it since you can shut off the screen backlight.
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I use my iPhone with a map app that has maps downloaded already. However I also use in conjunction with my iPhone a Dual brand bluetooth GPS receiver. They are Very accurate last a long time on a charge and are small. When mountain biking I put my iPhone on airplane mode and just turn on bluetooth and use my pre downloaded map app. That way phone battery lasts a long time. This has worked very well for me, recently riding unguided in the caribou region on the local mtb trails
