sierrabob

The gang finishing the 1200km Paris Brest Paris ride today should weigh in on this. If they're just using a phone for recording the whole ride, then I am trashing my Garmin.

PaulRivers

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean and I've seen a lot of those posts to that claim your phone battery will quickly die and horrible things will happen if you don't use 2 devices. Reminds me of a decade ago people insisting there was no way you could ever get a decent phone on your camera and you had to have a second cheap external camera (nowadays most people use their camera phones being just as good as a cheap digital camera for pics).

You don't "need" an external gps when you have your phone. If you prefer it that's fine, but I've seen a lot of those over the top claims about how your battery will immediately die and such.

bbbean 

I make it a point not to debate with people who dismiss arguments as nonsense. You seem very personally invested in this issue.

dr_lha

Ok. My bike doesn't come with a tent. You're using an extreme case here to prove what exactly? That there are cases where a Garmin is better? OK. I'm not arguing with that. I'm simply saying that for most people's normal use, a phone has enough battery life. I don't consider bike touring with a tent to be normal use. If I were going to do that, I'd buy a Garmin. I said that earlier in the thread actually.

Looigi

When I ride with my phone turned off, the battery doesn't go down a percentage point after 4 hrs! When I ride with it turned on displaying ride data mapping, it goes down a lot faster.

CliffordK

I've tried to start documenting some of my rides. Not trying to do any KOM or such...
Around town just isn't that interesting.

It is the longer rides that I want the data from. Or, perhaps even trip planning with.

So a 3 or 4 hour ride, or perhaps even an 8 hour ride is all fine. But, when I really want the GPS data is for those 16 hour rides, and multi-day rides, and it is a pain to maintain batteries, or to have spotty maps because I lack good cell phone coverage.

dr_lha

Out of interest, how do you charge your Garmin on long multi-day rides? If you ride 16 hours, then sleep in a tent, and ride 16 hours the next day, even a Garmin is going to need to be recharged for that.

JohnJ80

Exactly right - the broader market not the outlier applications.

These are good examples of outlier applications. If the dedicated bike computer manufacturers are pushed into only this market, they will exit because the volumes are insufficient to support the profit they need to continue. It's why Garmin got out of the phone business. It's why PND (separate personal navigation devices in cars) are declining. Smartphones are the disruptive technology.

It's worthwhile to note that it's possible to have resident maps on cell phones that don't require cell phone networks. There are any number of apps that support that. And, incidentally, this is hurting the PND handheld market too.

j.

rhm

I've been using my android phone to log rides for a couple years now. I have used MyTracks, Strava, and RideWithGPS. I may have tried another one, already forgotten. Strava is dodgy; has a habit of crashing. I uninstalled that. Anyway, the odd thing is that when I started doing this, the GPS would drain my battery in the time I rode 50-60 miles. Now, with the same phone, and the same battery, I can record a whole century. I don't think my battery is getting better, so I suspect they've improved the software somehow.

On long rides I also carry a backup battery pack, just in case.

sierrabob

At least one of the riders who just finished the 84 hour 1200 km Paris Brest Paris ride used an android phone to log the ride on Strava. The rest i looked at used various Garmin devices. Very impressive!! This requires external power, of course.

JohnJ80

The Garmin units require a connection (bluetooth) to a phone to do that real time.

J.

John_V 

I have pretty much the same setup as dr_lha with the exception of the SC and HRM sensors. Mine are Garmin Ant+ and they are connected to my iPhone 5c via the RFLKT+ which has an Ant+ bridge. Before I purchased the RFLKT, I was using a Cateye Double Wireless w/Cadence along with my iPhone (running Cyclemeter) for GPS mapping. When my Cateye took a nosedive, I pondered on getting a Garmin 510 that my riding buddy had for sale. The owner of my LSB told me to look into the RFLKT as an option to a Garmin. I did so and decided to go with it rather than the Garmin, only because I already had the GPS service available to me and I didn't see the need to duplicate the service since I had been using Cyclemeter for almost a year. When I first started using the iPhone for GPS mapping, I read several articles on hacks that can be performed on an iPhone to increase their battery life. I noticed that without using GPS, the hacks increased my battery life by nearly 30% when using the phone in the same manner as before I did the hacks. The same held true when the GPS was being used. Like some of the posts here, I have never run short on battery life on my phone, even after doing centuries.

Does this mean that my setup is better than a Garmin? We'll, are SPD-SL pedals better than Speedplays? It all boils down to a matter of preference. Use whatever you want to use because the end results are the same. However, I can tell you this, if you are a stat junkie, Garmin doesn't even come close to giving you the data and stats that you get from Cyclemeter. Plus, with Cyclemeter, there is no need to upload anything to a website and then go to the website to see your stats. Its all on your phone, including graphs, charts breakdown by routes, activity, speed zones, cadence zones, heart rate zones, distance and more. Not that anyone would need it, but with Cyclemeter, you can completely customize up to 99 viewing screens using over 100 bits of data on an RFLKT device. If you like to share your ride data, you can automatically upload your ride to Strava, Facebook, Twitter and a few other social media sites, when you end your ride. Unless you wait until you get home, you'll need a phone with the Garmin app to do that with a Garmin. So I guess my point is that it really doesn't matter which system you use, the best system is the one you currently have. Both have significant features not found on the other and as far as the battery life goes, as long as your battery lasts throughout your ride, then does it really matter how long it lasts or how often you charge it?

sierrabob

In checking out reviews on Cyclemeter, I once again saw this bogus statement: "Fair warning: Any GPS-based app will tax your phone's battery, so these are generally better suited to shorter rides."

Although you didn't reveal your battery saving hacks, I'm thinking just using airplane mode is pretty much all one needs to do. As we who are in the know pretty much agree, it's the screen and data function that kills the battery, not the GPS receiver.

Cyclemeter is wonderful, but despite all the customizable screens and audio feedback, it lacks turn by turn voice navigation of a GPX or TCX track. Bummer. There should be far more apps and gadgets that do this effectively. To do that with the RFLKT+, you need to run the RideWithGPS app.

bbbean 

So in other words, as long as you turn off everything that distinguishes your phone from a cycling computer, it'll work just fine.

JohnJ80

Maybe you could re-read the prior posts and it would clear up what's confusing you.

j.

ShaneHanchey

I use an external GPS that I originally bought for when I go flying. They only cost about $100 (I've had it a while and don't remember exactly). But it connects via bluetooth and takes some of the load off your phone/ipad or whatever you are using. Some are larger than others but I use the Dual XGPS 150 which is smaller than the palm of your hand and isnt noticeable in a jersey pocket. I just bluetooth it to my phone and use Strava. I haven't done any research on the subject but I would imagine it's probably slightly more accurate as well.

cmark84

My iPhone lasts a long time. I leave my display on so I can watch my HR, speed, listen to music, have conversations with Siri, etc... I have an external battery 1.5x the size of the iPhone 6 battery but its bulky and heavy. I may get one of those key ring size batteries that give 30% boost which would be enough to make emergency call and get back home with the screen off while still logging data.

John_V 

The hacks are pretty simple. You can do an internet search on increasing the battery life of you particular phone. The iPhone hacks include turning off Notifications to apps that you really don't care if they notify you of anything or not. Turning off Locations for apps that don't really need to keep track of you. Turn off Auto Updates for your apps from iTunes so you don't get update downloads while riding. When you start your ride, kill all the apps that are running in the background and only run your cycling app. There are others but these are some of the important ones. On an iPhone, turning Airplane mode ON will disable your GPS.

They are working on this. It was on their priority list to compete with RWGPS but took a back seat to Apple Watch compatibility. Hopefully, they will put it back on the priority list now that they have the Apple Watch thing pretty much taken care of. Plus, turn by turn only works if you already have the route downloaded into the database. It's nice for new routes that you haven't done before but if you ride the same route a lot, turn by turn is sort of pointless.

knitmeapie

one example does not = debunking

bbbean 

You must be new to the interwebs. My college roommate dated a girl whose brother-in-law once had beers with a guy who told a story that directly contradicts what you just wrote.

Sheesh...

knitmeapie

lolz
And the plural of "anecdote" is "data"

sierrabob

iPhone with the latest iOS no longer disables GPS in airplane mode. We discussed and verified this earlier in what has become a rather long thread. If you confirm this we will have more "anecdotal" info for debunking the myth.

Many people have no need for turn by turn navigation. Unfortunately, they are missing out on the adventure of navigating unfamiliar roads.

JohnJ80

You are not precluded from running another GPS program that gives turn by turn directions concurrently with your bike app. So you can get turn by turn directions while you are using your cycling computer app even if the cycling app doesn't support it. If one was using something like a RFLKT+, then one could have both the map display with turn by turn information with the full map support at the same time as all the ride data like speed, cadence, etc..... Too, most turn by turn apps on the phone also have audio directions which most bike computers do not.

J.

Seattle Forrest

And if you have 10 phones, you can have one of them on google maps and another one on bing maps and a third on OSM so you can compare each of them in real time while you dictate email into the fourth and use the fifth to trade stocks while you ride your bike to work. This is cheaper and more customizable than a Garmin and has infinite battery life.

JohnJ80

Huh? Now you're not even making sense.

J.