UKC

I have an excellent App on my iPhone :- Outdoors GB & Parks

Which uses OS 1:50,000 maps of various sectors of the country which can be rented or purchased.

The screen can be expanded or minimised to get an overall view of your location from the whole of the UK to expanded views of your 1:50,000 location.

It has a memory of the routes you have done giving distance, height gain/loss, average speed, current altitude, pace etc.

There is a stop/pause feature when recording a route

Compass

Latitude/longitude

In fact all the basic features I require.

However it has a crap battery life and if fully on will drain my iPhone in about 4 or 5 hours of continuous use.

I am looking for a dedicated GPS device with at least the above features with a much enhanced battery life suitable for a full days use.

Any recommendations?

In reply to Trangia:

External battery pack for your iPhone? £40 would buy you one big enough to power you for several days..

In reply to Trangia:

If you like the app so much you might want to consider using a gps receiver instead that hooks up by bluetooth. I know some people do things this way, turning the phone's GPS off. With an iphone though you can't swap the battery out but this set up would I think get you through a day out. Personally all other issues aside I can't get by with phone screen in sunlight.

I've been using an eTrex30 for a while. The mapping is slow when you get started but adequate for walking and I don't really use the "map" as such. All weather touch screens weren't great when I got mine. The non touch etrex 30 is probably very cheap now that a touch version came out in the last weeks. Battery life is excellent. but they are probably super cheap now. They would seem very sluggish compared to a smartphone but then they will go all day on 2 AAs.

The GPS64 is a better unit but heavier and more power hungry.

Essential is deciding whether you need OS mapping on it. If you always needed it and for a lot of areas it is better to buy it with the device (this maybe changing given how OS are approaching their digital maps of late).

In reply to Trangia:

I have used Satmap Active for many years but other than a bit of an upgrade to the screen and a slightly improved antenna it is now very old technology. Sort of weather resistant, slow to get a cold fix and often even a warm one. Battery compartment is amateurish Heath Robinson. Good when it came out 5 years ago, little changed since. Feels like a PDA in a plastic case.

Also used different Garmins.

But for the last year I have used ViewRanger with a Sony Xperia., The Sony has a larger and much better resolution screen than the Active 10/12, it is genuinely waterproof, battery lasts for 8 to 10 hours of continuous GPS. Much faster to fix and to scroll and zoom than the Active 10/12.

ViewRanger is good but has some dumb quirks. The PC mapping version is very crude, just about does for a route.

In future I would use a waterproof mobile phone, I see no point in spending a lot more on a stand alone GPS where the screen is significantly inferior, and the design / technology (SatMap anyhow) is years old.

You are a bit stuck with iPhones because they are not waterproof and battery not very good. You could buy a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact or a Z3 Compact or Samsung Active for less than a Garmin or Active 12 but you will then end up with Android.

In reply to Trangia:

I use a Garmin etrex 30 with mapping from a website called talkytoaster. It's rugged and doubles as my bike computer.
Avoid anything with a touch scoreen, I had one briefly but took it back.

In reply to Trangia:

I just use AlpineQuest on android to view downloaded OS maps and an external battery pack (Pebble) you can find for £20.

In reply to Trangia:

I use Viewranger on the iPhone and to extend battery life I simply but in in Airplane mode. Usually have 90% battery life left at the end of the day, but I don't wander round with the screen on all day, just occasionally verify navigational decisions. Knock it off airplane mode to pick up emails and calls at my lunch spot. Simples.

In reply to Trangia:

Hi Trangia - what are you using it for primarily?

Satmap 12 is a good unit, can run of either Lithium ion or AAA batteries (fiddly to switch between the 2 in the field though!) and is pretty robust.

Garmin Oregon series are similar types of display to a smartphone, and better than 62/64 series for biking as a much bigger and higher res screen.

I don't use my GPS much biking, so I've a garmin 62 series with UK 1:50k and caringorms NP at 1:25k loaded and it's a good device.

Though if your happy with your app, and only batter life is the issue, I'd agree with other posters that fixing the battery life with an external pack (or if you are somewhere sunny maybe a power monkey type setup that charges as you go) is the easiest way to go.

I've a battery pack that'll give me 6 or 7 charges that cost about £50 I think that I take for longer trips away where I won't have access to any mains power (and being in Scotland, unlikely to have access to solar either!)

In reply to Trangia:

Map and compass, cheaper and more reliable than technology that can pack up when you need it the most.

In reply to Richard Smith:

Congratulations! You win this weeks 'Roger Irrelevant Memorial Award'.*

In reply to DaveHK:

Blimy I've won something, that's a first!

In reply to Richard Smith:

*does not imply the existence of actual prize.

In reply to DaveHK:

Bugger!

In reply to Trangia:
I put my Android phone in a waterproof phone case (with a touch-screen front so I can still use it); the battery life is pretty crap (the phone was £40) but spare batteries (albeit several years old i.e. also crap) were £2.50 on Ebay. I also have an Anker 16000mAh battery pack but it is a bit heavy for lugging around on a walk (but good for expeditions away from power for hopefully 4/5 days, should be good for 6/7 charges).

Also Viewranger (not so fussed on the latest version but still good).

In reply to m0unt41n:


I played with a SatMap 12 and wasn't impressed; the half VGA screen was poorer than the long-obsolete LOOX N560 WinMobile 6.1 PDA I'd been using for GPS mapping for some time. The user interface was simple enough, but I didn't find it outstanding.


It's a bit like a more rugged N560 with a poorer screen...

I still use the N560 with a bespoke mapping app (no route finding or data logging, but I can do routes with GPSCycleComputer), or use the Hudl 1 with OruxMaps or Locus. I prefer the look & feel of Orux, but have entire UK mapping for Locus; really need to get around to cutting a mapping set for Orux...

The OS have been steadily going around the free map app providers, sending in the lawyers with 'cease and desist' orders, so it's hard to find one that still allows you to use OS mapping from the likes of Bing; Orux was great, in that it would hoover up areas of mapping, but it won't even use Bing OS mapping at all now, and Bing must have changed their API, as an old version of Orux no longer fetches Bing tiles. I need to check to see if Orux has added a paid OS tile service.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Sad really since SatMap have ended up being dragged back by hardware and they can never afford to develop as mobile phone technology races ahead.


Mapyx Quo is the same, brilliant desktop software. More powerful than anything else I have seen, but stuck with old windows development.

In reply to all:

Thanks everyone for the recommendations. I finally got an external battery case 2200 mAh made by those damn clever Chinese. The iPhone clips neatly into it and the increased size and weight is negligible. It has doubled my battery life and only requires charging every 48 hours. Price £29

In reply to Richard Smith:


*Yawns*