map my ride & smartphone enquiry

[mark 1]

I have recently been introduced to this site, and found a good looking route for a ride I am planning this weekend. I have printed out the directions onto small bits of card which i will fix with blutac to my handle bars - methinks this is not exactly state of the art!
From the MMR website it looks like you can dowload a free app onto your smartphone e.g. iphone, then use said phone like a cycle satnav in order to navigate the route. Has anyone got experience of this sort of thing? can you buy brackets for modern phones to fix to handlebars? how long do the phone batteries last?
I currently have a non-smart phone, however this MMR interest could be the catalyst for me to splash out on a new phone.

 

[MickL]

Can you buy brackets for smart phone ? Yes check Ebay plenty on there.
How long phone batteries last ? That is really down to the phone, I have Galaxy Note 2 and I get day and half out of it, most smart phones will give 12hrs or there about's but you extend the battery life by switching it to airplane mode this helps alot, low end smart phones wont give you much battery but enough for a trip out.

 

[MrJamie]

A lot of smartphones wont do more than about 4 hours with the gps on, even less if the screen is on all the time - it does vary a lot though between models. They also hate rain, really hate being dropped etc.

Probably worth considering a Garmin, if gps is the main motivation for purchase

 

[chernij]

I agree with the above poster. Get a Garmin for your bike if you want GPS.

I've used MapMyRide and currently use Endomundo with my rides. I get about 2.5 hours out of it. I have a running sportsband I use to have the phone on my bicep which I use for directions. Downside is due to battery life I can't track longer rides, but it's one of those things.

 

[sheffgirl]

I used both Map My Ride and the Navigation app on my phone last week. I knew how to get there, I just wanted to know how far it was until I reached my destination, I stopped occasionally to have some water and take some photos and seeing the miles go down from 9.6 gradually to 2 helped motivate me

 

[sheffgirl]

Oops, double posted.......

 

[albion]

The main battery drain is the screen. GPS tracking depends on the battery.
My current phone with a 2.8ah battery now lasts a good 20 hours with Endomondo. (is at 50% after a full 12 hour tracking day)
With voice directions and screen mainly off I reckon it would be about 15 hours.

 

[Davidc]

I gave up with the free software you're suggesting and now use one called BikeComputer (a couple of ££s for the paid version) - it exists for Android and iOS.

Running that with screen and GPS on my Galaxy Ace plus lasts about 4 hours, but I bought it an external pack and with that plugged in it will go for at least 20 hours.

I can import a gpx file and display it on a map, with my own track displayed simultaneously in another colour. Route following is very easy, and I use the stored, offline, map option.

The Garmin dedicated device is probably overall better, but it costs about 3 times as much as my phone did!

 

[Chris Norton]

I use ipbike as all the others did not seem to work quite right on my Orange San Francisco.

 

[Kookas]

A lot of smartphones wont do more than about 4 hours with the gps on, even less if the screen is on all the time - it does vary a lot though between models. They also hate rain, really hate being dropped etc.

Probably worth considering a Garmin, if gps is the main motivation for purchase

Modern high-end phones - I.e. HTC One, S4, iPhone 5 - will generally do 10 hours screen-on time. I suspect GPS wouldn't be so bad that it halves it, perhaps drops it to 7 hours.

It seems like if you can fit your phone to your bike (in a waterproof way), then you should. Garmins are so expensive for something that is just made redundant with Google Maps or equivalent. I could buy another phone for the price of a Garmin GPS, and have more features.

 

[Chris Norton]

I found a handlebar mount for just about any phone/sat nav on ebay. Bit clunky but plenty good enough for anything other than racing.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-Waterpr...26?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item3f1f9e9406