mobile phone sat nav - gps

[aqaleigh]

has anyone got experience of mobile phone sat nav with turn by turn mapping?

would you recommend it?

what maps / software work best in western europe

cheers

 

[johnnyh]

on my HTC Touch Diamond I have Vodafones sat nav, takes a couple of mins to get a fix on location, but then I have to say it is as good as the TomTOm or Loox units I have.

 

[aqaleigh]

on my HTC Touch Diamond I have Vodafones sat nav, takes a couple of mins to get a fix on location, but then I have to say it is as good as the TomTOm or Loox units I have.

you'll have to bear with me now - what is an HTC touch diamond is that a certain type of phone? if so does the vodafone sat nav cover europe?

cheers

 

[jimboalee]

I could have GPS on my moby, but my moby is not waterproof so I wouldn't use it on my bike.

 

[fossyant]

HTC's are smart phones - pretty good...the new ones have GPS built in

 

[cheadle hulme]

My google phone is HTC I think. GPS built in and uses 3G to get google maps, so works anywhere in the world.

I use it as the sat nav in the car, but as Jimbo says, no good on the bike as its not waterproof. Eats batteries too with GPS switched on.

 

[ufkacbln]

One thing to beware of is the mapping.

Some of the phones have built in maps, or on a memory card. However if as with some (Nokia N95 for instance) you are downloading maps as you move this can seriously eat into your data allowance or cause charges.

 

[kyuss]

With Nokia Maps you can download them your computer and load them to the phone using PC Suite to save downloading them on the fly. Even if you've got a mac (like me) and PC Suite doesn't work you can still load them to the phone manually. I've got the entire UK on mine so far.

 

[RedBike]

I used to have tomtom on my Nokia 6630 an now I have Copilot on my Xda.
Tomtom is probably slightly easier to follow / use but there's really not much in it.

There's a few big problems with using the phone.
It's not waterproof so you can't really have it on your bars
It's harder than you think to read such a small map as you ride along and once you get up over say 15mph it's not always that easy to hear the directions clearly due to wind noice.

I found the easyiest way was to put my phone in a rear pocket and use a set of headphones. It doesn't matter if I can't see the map and with the headphones I can clearly hear the directions. This way the phone also stays dry.

Battery life will vary depending on which phone you get. My nokia would struggle to last just 2 hours. The xda lasts about 4 depending on how much you view the screen.

They're great to have in your pocket for when you get lost. I found the Nokia a god send for Sportives. When you haven't seen a sign for ages you just pull the phone out and look at where you are.

 

[kyuss]

Any lack of a phones waterproofness is easy to fix with a Boxit case. You get proper bike mounts for them too which makes them ideal.

 

[aqaleigh]

i'm starting to think that maybe a phone is not the way to go then?

i will be using a 705 anyway but as i need a new phone thought it might be an idea to get one with sat nav - however i had assumed the battery life would still be okay, this seems not to be the case

cheers for the comments so far

 

[byegad]

I have a BlueNext GPS bluetooth (about £20) for my SE 902i. I use amAze mapping (free to download) and it works fine. I only use it when I'm 'lost' as the battery of the phone is the limiting factor. You also need a big GPRS/WAP bundle as the actual map is updated by GPRS while the GPS does the actual positioning. It will work as a SAT' NAV' too.
It let me down one day when Orange's GPRS system crashed and was down for a few hours.
I also have an old Grey Scale Garmin Legend unit which has a very basic onboard map and no facility to improve the mapping. (Later, Colour, Legends do have a SD card for a map). This has only let me down when the batteries died but replacing the batteries sorted that one.

 

[RedBike]

i'm starting to think that maybe a phone is not the way to go then?

i will be using a 705 anyway but as i need a new phone thought it might be an idea to get one with sat nav - however i had assumed the battery life would still be okay, this seems not to be the case

cheers for the comments so far

The battery life of the phone will be fine until you power up the GPS.
The software needs a GPS receiver or a link to one via bluetooth. The screen on the phone needs to be lit up for long periods of time. The software itself uses a lot of processing power and there's regular sounds being produced. This all uses a lot of additional power and significantly reduces battery life!

 

[aqaleigh]

cheers guys and girls

 

[byegad]

I agree with RedBike. If you want a turn by turn sat nav working for a long time (a day's ride say) then the phone is not the way to go. However, if you want an emergency position finder the phone is the way to go, especially one with a built in GPS. One less thing to carry.