sbesley wrote:What I would like to know is how many Megabytes of data would be downloaded on a day's touring using a smart phone as a GPS and downloading the mapping as you go?
Anyone any experience of this?
I've not used it for cycle touring yet but... I drive a 70 mile round trip to work daily and have my phone (HTC Desire) on the dashboard on most days, acting as a routefinder (even though, after twenty years, I'm pretty sure of the route) using Google navigator and the live traffic overlay of the whole route. I've got a cheap tarrif (£17/month with 500MB data/month). So far this month - and it's the 18th - I've used 70MB of the data allowance and will probably use well under 150MB by the end of the month. That includes all data, not just the map stuff. By my reckoning, cycle touring should be well within the capabilities of pretty much any tarif limits.
The only thing that pushes the data limits are things like videos, and - to a lesser extent - large pictures or music tracks. But these can be downloaded over WiFi while at home or work without eating into the data allowance.