Smartphone Navigation with the Moto E
Posted: 29 Nov 2015, 4:40pm
Smartphone GPS
I said I would put a review here for anyone considering using a smartphone for navigation. My relatively ancient Android smartphone had a poor battery life and when I bought a new one I wanted something inexpensive with 4G which was small enough to fit easily in a pocket and which had a decent battery life so you could navigate with it on a bike. I don't rate expensive phablet phones because I think they are difficult to carry around easily.
Which magazine identified the new £100 Moto E 2nd generation phone http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Moto-G ... a+moto+eas having a sensibly sized pocketable body with the advantage of a very long battery life. I have found that the battery lasts 5 days in normal use. The Moto E doesn't have the highest screen resolution around but the screen display is pretty good even in bright sunlight. The camera is only 5 mpixels but I don't usually take photos with a phone so that doesn't bother me because I always carry a high quality camera when cycling around or touring.
Navigation
I usually plan my cycle routes on a laptop with cycle.travel or bikeroute toaster. These applications both produce a .gpx file which you can use in various navigation apps. Cycle.travel is very good. It chooses quiet routes, it offers not only .gpx but also .pdf maps of your route that you can print out. It sometimes uses off road cycle tracks and offers a hill profile of your route with photographs of turns distances and times. It even displays possible en route accommodation in your chosen price bracket. I usually plan routes on my laptop or tablet and save the resulting .gpx files in Google Drive so they can easily be picked up on my phone. It's quite possible to plan routes with your phone too zooming in for fine detail.
Although I personally prefer map based navigation I often use Osmand Plus based on Open Street Maps to navigate on the road, especially if I have time constraints in unfamiliar territory. If you import a .gpx file into Osmand you can set it to guide you on the ensuing track with voice instructions at each turn. I really like that, navigation then becomes childishly simple. The .gpx files must be put in the Osmand/tracks directory on the phone. I use a file manager called ES file explorer to do that. Alternatively you can associate .gpx files with Osmand and clicking on them in a file explorer will load your route straight into Osmand. On the road if you decide to stray from the track Osmand will direct you back onto your route. A word of warning here, set your Osmand to car for navigation otherwise if you stray from your route and get redirected it will take you to some bizarre places only suitable for MTBs!
In practice I have found that using Osmand on the Moto E that the phone battery will guide you for 6 hours or more depending on how you set the screen. It can be set within Osmand to only display on the phone's screen when you are about to make a turn thus saving battery life. You can of course connect an auxiliary battery to your phone to extend the navigation period. I carry one in my bar bag.
Mounting the phone
I purchased a couple of Defender two piece rubber cover/hard plastic shells for the Moto E. They cost just £2.76 each ! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Moto-2 ... +fo+moto+e I had an old bar/stem mount for a cycle computer and bolted this to the hard protective plastic shell of the Defender. This then clips to my bikes stem like a cycle computer with an O Ring. The phone with its inner shockproof rubber cover clips into the plastic shell in landscape format so it is there right underneath your nose. If it rains I put a piece cling film around it although that is probably unnecessary in light rain.
Shows the hard case mounted on the stem with the phone above
Shows the rear of the hard shell case with the mount bolted to it with 1.5 mm bolts and nuts
The Moto E clipped into the hard case mounted on the stem
Recording a route
Osmand does it and will save a route for future reference. It's no Strada though.
Conclusion
In the past I have used my old HTC smartphone for navigation now and again, often in combination with maps. But now with the long lasting battery in the Moto E I think I will be using the smartphone a lot more to navigate.
The total cost of my setup was £100 for the phone, £5.50 for the Defender mounting cases and £5 for Osmand Plus. In other words less than the cost of a basic Garmin or similar device, ending up with voice guidance and a far more versatile and useful gadget in your pocket. It must be noted that many Garmin users use Open Street Maps in preference to Garmins own maps. If you already own a smartphone using Osmand is one way to deliver great satellite navigation on a bike but you may find battery life a problem.. With the Moto E 2nd generation being so inexpensive it may be worth buying one just for its long lasting internal battery performance and not even bothering with a simm card?
Final Question?
In the past I have also loaded up Alpinequest and Viewranger but never explored them fully and wonder if anyone has views on how good these are in comparison to voice guided Osmand?
Or, has anyone found anything smartphone based that offers better navigation?
Al
I said I would put a review here for anyone considering using a smartphone for navigation. My relatively ancient Android smartphone had a poor battery life and when I bought a new one I wanted something inexpensive with 4G which was small enough to fit easily in a pocket and which had a decent battery life so you could navigate with it on a bike. I don't rate expensive phablet phones because I think they are difficult to carry around easily.
Which magazine identified the new £100 Moto E 2nd generation phone http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Moto-G ... a+moto+eas having a sensibly sized pocketable body with the advantage of a very long battery life. I have found that the battery lasts 5 days in normal use. The Moto E doesn't have the highest screen resolution around but the screen display is pretty good even in bright sunlight. The camera is only 5 mpixels but I don't usually take photos with a phone so that doesn't bother me because I always carry a high quality camera when cycling around or touring.
Navigation
I usually plan my cycle routes on a laptop with cycle.travel or bikeroute toaster. These applications both produce a .gpx file which you can use in various navigation apps. Cycle.travel is very good. It chooses quiet routes, it offers not only .gpx but also .pdf maps of your route that you can print out. It sometimes uses off road cycle tracks and offers a hill profile of your route with photographs of turns distances and times. It even displays possible en route accommodation in your chosen price bracket. I usually plan routes on my laptop or tablet and save the resulting .gpx files in Google Drive so they can easily be picked up on my phone. It's quite possible to plan routes with your phone too zooming in for fine detail.
Although I personally prefer map based navigation I often use Osmand Plus based on Open Street Maps to navigate on the road, especially if I have time constraints in unfamiliar territory. If you import a .gpx file into Osmand you can set it to guide you on the ensuing track with voice instructions at each turn. I really like that, navigation then becomes childishly simple. The .gpx files must be put in the Osmand/tracks directory on the phone. I use a file manager called ES file explorer to do that. Alternatively you can associate .gpx files with Osmand and clicking on them in a file explorer will load your route straight into Osmand. On the road if you decide to stray from the track Osmand will direct you back onto your route. A word of warning here, set your Osmand to car for navigation otherwise if you stray from your route and get redirected it will take you to some bizarre places only suitable for MTBs!
In practice I have found that using Osmand on the Moto E that the phone battery will guide you for 6 hours or more depending on how you set the screen. It can be set within Osmand to only display on the phone's screen when you are about to make a turn thus saving battery life. You can of course connect an auxiliary battery to your phone to extend the navigation period. I carry one in my bar bag.
Mounting the phone
I purchased a couple of Defender two piece rubber cover/hard plastic shells for the Moto E. They cost just £2.76 each ! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Motorola-Moto-2 ... +fo+moto+e I had an old bar/stem mount for a cycle computer and bolted this to the hard protective plastic shell of the Defender. This then clips to my bikes stem like a cycle computer with an O Ring. The phone with its inner shockproof rubber cover clips into the plastic shell in landscape format so it is there right underneath your nose. If it rains I put a piece cling film around it although that is probably unnecessary in light rain.
Shows the hard case mounted on the stem with the phone above
Shows the rear of the hard shell case with the mount bolted to it with 1.5 mm bolts and nuts
The Moto E clipped into the hard case mounted on the stem
Recording a route
Osmand does it and will save a route for future reference. It's no Strada though.
Conclusion
In the past I have used my old HTC smartphone for navigation now and again, often in combination with maps. But now with the long lasting battery in the Moto E I think I will be using the smartphone a lot more to navigate.
The total cost of my setup was £100 for the phone, £5.50 for the Defender mounting cases and £5 for Osmand Plus. In other words less than the cost of a basic Garmin or similar device, ending up with voice guidance and a far more versatile and useful gadget in your pocket. It must be noted that many Garmin users use Open Street Maps in preference to Garmins own maps. If you already own a smartphone using Osmand is one way to deliver great satellite navigation on a bike but you may find battery life a problem.. With the Moto E 2nd generation being so inexpensive it may be worth buying one just for its long lasting internal battery performance and not even bothering with a simm card?
Final Question?
In the past I have also loaded up Alpinequest and Viewranger but never explored them fully and wonder if anyone has views on how good these are in comparison to voice guided Osmand?
Or, has anyone found anything smartphone based that offers better navigation?
Al