In reply to steveshaking:
Many thanks for your help. I have managed to find everything now I think (though how one's supposed to know that tapping the black circle top left produces a GPS screen I have no idea!)
The one thing eluding me is that have instructed the GPS to navigate to a POI, although the distance is correct and the ETA counts down as I get closer and the compass works, the Navigation Arrow stays aligned with the phone so that I can turn the phone round and end up with the arrow pointing in completely the wrong direction. I have emailed View Ranger about this - we'll see what reply I get. I have to say that there seems to be a real gap in the market for an app to turn a phone into a GPS that is simple and quick to use.
I use a GPS at present to enter a grid ref of my car, or my rucksack if I leave it at the bottom of a climb, or a mountain hut where I am intending to stay. When I get near to where I think I should be and the visibility is bad (dark or fog), then I’ll often turn the GPS on just to check how far I have to go and which direction. Sometimes one can be only 50m from a hut and not see it, less in the case of a rucksack (both these things have happened to me in the past!). Obviously with one’s car, or a rucksack one can take a reading and store it as a POI, with a hut that one hasn’t been to I would need to input the data manually from a map (if I didn’t have the map stored in my phone that is). On some expeditions I have been on (e.g. Greenland) there are no maps anyway.
Having been through the system over the phone with the VR help centre, I have to say that I don’t find it at all intuitive, though I can see that everything is there that one needs - it’s just not in a very convenient order to get at. Often when one is operating these things it is very cold and windy with hail/sleet blowing in one’s face and the last thing one wants to be doing is trying to remember just how you access a particular screen when your fingers are numb and there’s a real risk of frostbite if you don’t keep moving. At the same time one does not want to have to carry more gear than one needs to so if a phone can act as a GPS why carry a GPS too?
Personally:
I would like to be able to set up folders for POIs so that I could store ones for say a forthcoming trip to Italy in one folder and Lake District ones in another. Folders within folders would be good as would be the ability to move POIs from one folder to another.
It would be good if one could easily get to the GPS screens and the folder of POIs (and maybe a few other things, in fact basically anything that you can get at by swiping or tapping elsewhere) from the Options Screen.
It would be good if when you wanted to create a POI from the POI Organiser it gave you the option of creating it from:
a) current position,
b) position selected from map,
c) manual entry of coordinates.
Likewise, it would be good if when you go to the Enter Coordinates screen it gave you the option of saving them as a POI and giving them a name and/or navigating to to them using the GPS.
I imagine that as the app is free to download, they must make their money selling the maps that go with it and I’d be more than happy to purchase some of these and recommend the app to others if I can get the thing to work properly.
Looking at the apps currently on the market, very few seem to have a GPS that tells you more than your current position and track it on an inbuilt map - this one does but it could be a lot easier to use than it currently is and the instructions could be much clearer. How is one supposed to know for instance that touching the bottom of the map brings up some controls or tapping the black circle (top left) activates the GPS while keeping ones finger on it produces a page called Trip Readouts? I can’t see that anywhere in the instructions.
I think if anyone could produce a GPS app and make it super simple and super user friendly I’d gladly pay for it on its own and buy the maps as extras, and, I imagine from my fruitless searches for a GPS app which does what I want, so would 1000s of others!
Anyway, we'll see what the VR help centre says!
Post edited at 19:33