Originally Posted by
Spld cyclist
I also discovered that I'll need to carefully verify whether the new phone has a gps satellite receiver. I assumed before that most of them have one (instead of relying on the cell network), but that's apparently not the case. Sometimes the owner's manuals are not clear on that. There is a vague term they use called "assisted gps" that can mean either that the phone uses the cell network to *help* find the phone's position, or that there is no satellite receiver at all.
Some of the cheaper phones come with very limited memory. For example, they might list 4 GB but if you look at the owner's manual it says that 2 GB or whatever is free. Many will take up to a 32 GB SD card. Is there any practical difference between using internal memory vs an SD card?
If it uses the term "gps" then it is using the GPS satellite system. "Assisted GPS" with cell towers enables the GPS chip to get a position fix much faster than if it had to start from power up. The GPS chip is turned off for when it is not used because it is a power drain. Therefore, when it wakes up, and if all it knows that it's on planet earth, it has to wait until it sees enough of the constellation of satellites to successively interpolate in on it's position. If it knows about where it is from known positions and time delays from cell towers, it can get to that position fix much, much faster. Assisted GPS is not some sort of navigation system that is devoid of GPS satellite data.
As for memory internal vs SD, it's almost always better to have internal on the motherboard memory over SD card memory. It's faster and, IIRC, will consume less power.
This sort of started from "What's the newest old smartphone I can get to turn into a bike computer?" into more of a review of available lower end smartphones. That feature creep is going to land you into a current smartphone offering pretty quickly.
Might as well just bite the bullet and do it.
J.