ukdodger wrote:Psamathe wrote:ukdodger wrote:
I like the idea of the smartphone. My phone is an old PAYG Nokia. I'll look into trading up that will give backup and a phone.
Smartphones are pretty easy to load gpx's onto (depending on the app) and have loads of storage for mapping (depending on the app). For example, on my iPhone I have the entire UK mapping loaded at the highest resolution (vector mapping) and it takes approx 600MB. Loads of different ways to load gpx (mail it to a special email address and it'll appear in the app, Dropbox, OneDrive, FTP, etc.). But how easy it is and how good the maps are will depend on the app you select.
Ian
Thanks. Can you say what it costs. No worries if you'd rather not.
What is available depends on what phone you get. If you are a smartphone user you'll probably be more prepared to pay more whereas if it's just for emergency backup you'll be looking for something cheaper.
I use my phone a lot so I went iPhone (bit more expensive) and MapOut app (£3 approx) using free OSM mapping incl. e.g. cycle network layers, contours, etc. Some apps are more Social Media focused, others more focused on outdoor activities (MapOut is more focused on outdoor activities).
If you get a 2nd hand phone (cheaper) be careful about how worn the battery is (charge/discharge cycles reduce the power the battery can store and thus you get less use between charges). Also, older phones tend to not take latest operating systems (or are closer to the time when they wont update to the latest) and quite a lot of software apps limit how old an operating system they will work on. So 2nd hand phone cheaper but probably shorter life.
Discussed on other threads but also consider if you want offline route calculation (you enter start and end points and it calculates a route - many don't think apps do this well as they don't have the resources a web online system has); do you want turn by turn announcements for a pre determined route?; do you want just a track drawn over a map. Different apps provide different functionality and there are recent threads discussing these things.
Ian