The high cost of a Garmin or a cheap phone

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johnnyb47

Guru
Location
Wales
Hi.
Ive been using my Garmin edge 25 for a good year and unfortunately the battery is struggling to last on my longer rides.
Overall its been good, but does get a little temperamental from time to time when uploading my rides.
Looking at the other offerings that garmin sell they do come in quite expensive and have way to many features for me.
A cheaper option i was thinking about was to get a cheap phone that i could simply dedicate to just using strava and the occasional phone call in an emergency. I would ideally want it to be small. Ive also noticed on ebay some stick on locking mounts that are compatible with garmin. This would mean a phone wouldn't look out of place on my existing garmin front mount.
As for battery life the phone would need to be able to cope with 6 hr plus rides when i occasionally do them. If the battery does die i could always take a small power bank to top it up.
Are there any phones out there that you could recommend. Cheap but with decent GPS accuracy and decent battery life or am i asking for the impossible from a cheap phone.
All the very best,
Johnny
 

Ming the Merciless

There is no mercy
Location
Inside my skull
Cheap power pack would be far cheaper. Even the cheap smart phones are not cheap.
 

rualexander

Legendary Member
Motorola Defy, old model but plenty available on ebay, even some 'new'.
I had one a while back as my main phone and still have it, been meaning to repurpose it into a cycling computer for ages.
Good battery life, waterproof, compact, spare batteries still available including higher capacity batteries which come with a replacement back panel to accommodate the bigger battery.
The only thing might be whether the software you want to use will be compatible with the older version of Android
 
D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
Honor 8S £99.99 from CPW possibly other places, good battery life but for how long I don't know, but it all depends what you want a Garmin/Wahoo/etc. will always be far more accurate than a phone, but it depends what you want.
 

rualexander

Legendary Member
I just dug out my Moto Defy and powered it up, turns out Strava is not compatible with the older version of Android (2.2.2).
My Viewranger app still works fine on it, not sure if current versions would though.
 

wonderloaf

Veteran
I had a flyer from Morgan Computers posted to me the other day, they seem to sell a lot of new and re-furbed mobile phones at low prices, the re-furbs have a 3 month warranty so you get some piece of mind:
https://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/c/500/Mobile-Phones/

Also have you considered a Garmin 200, I've been using one for the past 3 years or so and it has never let me down. They're getting harder to come by but are still available if you look around.
 

Nebulous

Guru
Location
Aberdeen
I've been thinking about getting a back-up for important rides, as my expensive Garmin lets me down far too often when it matters. I've seen somebody claiming on another forum that a cheap smartphone will run strava for several days on airplane mode. I have a motorola G6 which is a decent budget phone but I'm sure Motorola do cheaper models, so I might look for one of them.
 

Tenkaykev

Guru
Location
Poole
I've got a Samsung galaxy S7 that's a few years old. When I got my new phone a few months ago I decided to see how the S7 would work as a bike computer.
I had a garmin mount so I used a Gorrilla heavy duty pad to stick it to the back of a Spigen case. I have komoot on the phone with downloaded maps. I put the phone in aeroplane mode (GPS still works) set the display to always on and off I went. It worked really well, battery drain of about 10% per hour.
Big clear screen, waterproof and an mp3 player as an added bonus.
So it can work, take a look at the cheaper Nokia phones, there was a promotion from Nokia with a decent spec phone with 6"+ screen for £129 a couple of weeks ago
 
I just dug out my Moto Defy and powered it up, turns out Strava is not compatible with the older version of Android (2.2.2).
My Viewranger app still works fine on it, not sure if current versions would though.
There will likely be other route recording apps for that version of android that would let you export a gpx which you can then upload to Strava. A bit of a faff but still doable in a pinch.
 

PaulSB

Legendary Member
If you do buy a new device go for Wahoo not Garmin. Sooner or later the newer, more expensive Garmin will tie itself in knots and let you down. Wahoo will not, it's much simpler to use and vastly superior to Garmin.

You're situation suggests buying a power bank for +/- £15 is the solution.
 
OP
OP
johnnyb47

johnnyb47

Guru
Location
Wales
Thanks for all the good words of advice. Heaven knows why i didn't think of getting a replacement battery for my garmin 25. Thanks to @si_c for pointing this out and will get one in due course.
Considering the high cost of Garmin, you would expect them to have less bug's in there software.. As they've plugged into a niche market with not much competition i suppose they can charge whatever they want and get away with it.
Once again many thanks for your help
 
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