I did an approximately 10-hour ride earlier this year, tracking GPS on my iPhone (with the Strava app), and the phone was connected all the time to my Anker 20,100 battery bank. At the end, it had only just dropped to showing 3 leds out of 4, which suggested I could go around 4 days of similar rides between charges.
Navigation device or Smartphone?
- Thread starter Cycleops
- Start date
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Randy Butternubs
Über Member
I think you can compensate for the shortcomings of phones for a lot less money than a dedicated device costs. I've never owned a dedicated GPS device and don't usually use my phone for bicycle navigation so take this with a pinch of salt:
- Many newer phones are waterproof.
- You can get cases which are waterproof and crash resistant.
- Phone touchscreens can be tempremental when they have water on them but I've head new ones are a lot better.
- I've heard you can get matt glass screenprotectors which cut out the glare in direct sunlight.
- Obviously you can get powerbanks etc. to extend the battery life.
Also, phones seem to be more versatile than dedicated GPSs. The power and good screens let you pan and zoom quickly and you can make up routes on the fly which seems awkward or impossible on many other devices. You can ask for a point-to-point route or upload your own from a computer. You can use downloaded offline maps or, if you have internet connection, you can use google maps which will often tell you where the nearest cake stop is. You have the choice of regular road maps or OS maps too.
- Many newer phones are waterproof.
- You can get cases which are waterproof and crash resistant.
- Phone touchscreens can be tempremental when they have water on them but I've head new ones are a lot better.
- I've heard you can get matt glass screenprotectors which cut out the glare in direct sunlight.
- Obviously you can get powerbanks etc. to extend the battery life.
Also, phones seem to be more versatile than dedicated GPSs. The power and good screens let you pan and zoom quickly and you can make up routes on the fly which seems awkward or impossible on many other devices. You can ask for a point-to-point route or upload your own from a computer. You can use downloaded offline maps or, if you have internet connection, you can use google maps which will often tell you where the nearest cake stop is. You have the choice of regular road maps or OS maps too.
John Peel
Senior Member
- Location
- Cheshire England
I would be lost without my power banks. My 2 together equal 20k, and get the same kind of life. My Garmin is at the bottom of my bag for emergencies only. I'm looking for a good handle bar holder my iPhone X. Its the biggest screen I have had and its crystal clear, waterproof to nearly 2 meters, and in comparing it to my iPhone 5s over this last week, the batter lasts about 5 times longer. I had to get bluetooth headphones though for when I return to Marseille, as when using Google Maps or Maps.me on my phone, I always use the headphones connected directly to the phone so I can shove the phone in the handle bar bag and still get directions. The problem was that I kept forgetting I had taken my headphones off when I got off the bike and then rode off trapping then in the front wheel. I lost 4 lots of headphones like this in 3 months. The iphone x doesn't have a headphone socket. The power socket doubles as a headphone socket but thats no good when I'm trying to charge the phone at the same time. Lets hope I don't loose my bluetooth headphones, I need to more careful
- Location
- London
Re your laptop, did you say upthread what it is? If a conventional windows jobbie with a hard disc i would consider swapping it on tour for a chromebook. Tougher, far superior battery life.
My aluminium-bodied MacBook is pretty tough, it has an SSD and good battery life, and I can fully charge it multiple times from a single charge of my Anker 20,100
Yes, I sometimes think two 10k ones might have been better than a 20k, so I can charge one while I'm using one - I might get a 10k too for that reason.
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- Location
- London
Don't think i can recharge my chromebook from a powerbank (i use a tab on tour,) but am impressed. Usb output on the powerbank obviously. What does it feed into on the macbook?
MacBook has a single USB-C/charger port, and I use the cable from the USB mains charger that came with it.
John Peel
Senior Member
- Location
- Cheshire England
Having a little background with computers, I opted for a windows base laptop. No reason other than personal taste and I have tons of video and image editing software that is windows based, as will as other software. I have a dell with i7 and all the fruit. It has USB and c charging ports. I opted for SSD rather than HDD drive due to the bone shaking it was going to be getting. No moving parts was important to me. A normal hard drive would have been toast by now, I'm sure of it. It also helps on battery life too, because solid state drives help to start up really quickly, make it fast on software, and it shuts down quick, not to mention I can man handle it while its switched on. That said, each to there own hey, I'm in no doubt at all that the Apple would trounce all over my Dell in a lot of ways.
John Peel
Senior Member
- Location
- Cheshire England
SSD all the way for cycle touring.
jefmcg
Guru
How is a chromebook these days without internet? When they first came out, they were basically poorly designed doorstops without wifi.
- Location
- London
Sounds good. Especially the usb charging port. I could be tempted by that but to be frank i am happy to have left windows and its update messes behind.
- Location
- London
You can work on documents offline. They are then loaded up to the cloud and synced with your android tabs next time you connect to the internet. Lots of free wifi available these days. In my uk travels another reason to pop to a spoons. An italian city i often visit has a fair bit of urban free wifi so i can sit under a palm tree looking at the med while i update stuff. I actually like the way it defaults to shoving stuff onto cloud google drive as in the past i have been lax with my backup regime. Google drive allows you to select files for offline availability. You can of course plug in a pen drive for extra offline storage. Some apps, notably a good text editor i use for editing gpx files work fine offline.
My chromebook is 14 inch, sleek aluminium case, cost me £170. I feel well shut of windows, now and again i get the old windows laptop out and it just feels so damn clunky. Chromebook charges fast and the battery can last 10 hours or more.
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- Location
- London
Yes, that's the one. Very well built. Will recharge my 7 inch tab and (non smart) phone a fair few times. Tend to think it's good to use very high capacity powerbanks as of course there is a built-in pretty high power loss in them. I wouldn't use anything under 10,000 beczuse of that. And in fact when you do the basic sums the anker 20,100 one is usually better value. Comes with its own bag of course, though that is the shoddiest bit of it. But when i commented on this to anker (the fastening cord bust within a day) they very nicely sent me a brand new one - have upgraded both with thin bungee cord and my own toggles.
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I also have the 20,100 powerbank from amazon, its great. Now I have two - and will likely bring both on longer tours over a week or so. I've always just used my iPhone to navigate and keep strava idling in the background, But I tend to familiarise myself with the route beforehand then write down junctions/track numbers/road names etc and set it as my lock screen so i can just tap the phone to see my written directions. i only turn the phone and maps on if im lost or need to deviate from the route. This serves me well in the uK but i'm planning a 2-3 week tour from uk to germany in summer and i dont know how well it will work over there...plus, i did the switch to Android a few weeks back and i'm loving the phone and better battery life (plus dash charging - meaning a full charge from empty to full in 30 mins or so - great for pitstops ) but i need to find a decent app for plotting and viewing offline cycle routes because google maps is **** for driving so i dread to trust it on the bike!! If anyone has android specific recommendations for apps i can use for both on and offline bike route planning in Europe, especially belgium/holland/germany, then let me know!
) but i need to find a decent app for plotting and viewing offline cycle routes because google maps is **** for driving so i dread to trust it on the bike!! If anyone has android specific recommendations for apps i can use for both on and offline bike route planning in Europe, especially belgium/holland/germany, then let me know!
