seeker333

Osmand gives turn-by-turn voice prompts, like any good gps navigation program. You can customize the voice (language). It operates free of wifi or cell service, needing only a gps chip in a tablet. You have to downland offline-usable maps prior to use, and there's a download limit of 10 maps with the free Osmand android version that I use.

Mapswithme will also work, but the free version of Osmand is better than the free version of Mapswithme. The paid version of Mapswithme may be better than Osmand, but I have not tried it. Mapswithme is younger than Osmand but seems to have more development activity and emphasis on improving the user interface, which is a weakness in Osmand (the actual gps location and mapping features are extremely accurate).

I run Osmand on a Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet, sold exclusively by Walmart. It gives you 95% of the function of a Nexus 7 for a much lower price. I paid $129 for the HS7P and another $40 for 64gb Class 10 sd memory (for camera use), which is $100 less than the cost of a $269 N7 32gb tablet.

My tablet (and most others) will only run ~6 hrs continuously with GPS on, so I use the device intermittently to stretch out battery life. Whenever I see the next turn is an hour away, I note X miles remaining to turn, look at bike computer/odometer and note mileage Y, add X+Y for next turn point, turn off tablet (sleep mode), and when I reach (X+Y-1) miles I turn tablet back on, giving it adequate time (~5 mins) to wake up and reacquire satellites and gps data. You could make a tablet last for 2-3 days in this manner.

BTW, if you're willing to spend the money for a N7, you really should be looking at a Kindle Fire HDX - they were specifically designed and priced to beat the Nexus tablets. Better processor and graphics for $10 less at a given memory spec.

spinnaker

Co-pilot does.


Full maps are downloaded to the tablet.

spinnaker

I checked it out and the free version of Co-Pilot does routing. It just does not do turn by turn. You need to pay for that after the trial.

seeker333

Mapswithme allows user to specify data storage location (in my case I put maps on a sdcard). "DL failed" sounds to me like inadequate memory - specify new storage location, retry DL, should work.

Osmand permits only 10 map DLs - you DLed 10 - that's why you get no more - doesn't matter if you delete 9, with 1 left, you still reached limit of free version. You can buy the paid version (Osmand+) from Amazon app store for $3.99 with no DL limits - OR - you can uninstall your free version, reinstall, then you get 10 more map DLs. If you are clever you can DL 10 maps, uninstall/reinstall, DL 10 more, etc. Collect the whole world of maps. But you really ought to just pay 4 bucks and make life easier.

spinnaker

Sold by NewEgg too. At least the regular Sero. Not sure if there is a difference in the Pro. Nice device. I like the fact that it has a SD memory slot. One of the things I hate about the Nexus 7. Is it updateable? Once nice thing about the Nexus but I understand updates will be stopped soon for the original Nexus.

Tourist in MSN

As a test, I turned off everything except GPS on my smartphone, then turned the screen off. GPS and one GPS app stayed running. I got about 6 hours of GPS tracking with less than half battery usage. When my screen is turned on, that really sucks up the battery pretty fast. I do not have any SIM cards in my smartphone, I have no idea how much battery that saves me.

Regarding filling up your memory pretty fast, it is best if you plug a Micro SD card into the phone. Then configure your apps to be located on the external SD card instead of internal memory.

Tandem Tom

A newbie Nexus question. Is there a way to conserve the battery? If I understand apps will continue to draw power even when not used.
Thanks!

seeker333

The regular Sero sells for 79 bucks, I think. The Pro is better, quad core processor, better graphics, more memory, worth the extra cost for my intended use.

The OS can be updated - whether Hisense/Walmart choose to OTA update the Sero 7 Pro is another matter. They did one OTA update before I bought mine, which came with v4.2.1. All the HS7Ps have android 4.2.1 AFAIK.

There are several hacker/developer types who have released versions of 4.3 and 4.4 AOS for the HS7P with installers/uninstallers for android neophytes like myself. I haven't tried them. I suspect everything works fine except possibly the camera, or some other hardware-specific aspect of the HS7P's OS. I'm a little lazy, I don't care to have the latest/greatest stuff if it requires a lot of work. I avoid voluntary beta-testing.

Thanks for the tip about Co-Pilot. I'm downloading Co-Pilot's North America map now (just installed free version), gonna give it a try.

bikebuddha 

The number one battery draw is usually the screen. In the settings you can see what's using the most power.

Tourist in MSN

When I want to shut off apps, I turn the phone completely off, then turn it on again with only the app or apps that I want to have running.

Turn off wifi when not using it. When not using GPS, turn that off. Etc.

The screen uses a lot of power.

I do not have a SIM card in mine, so I do not know how much that saves battery or not. But I have heard that if you are out of cell range, that the phone will keep trying to connect to a cell tower, using more power. I do not know if you can disable the phone system from working while leaving it on for other purposes like GPS or not.

wahoonc

Depends on the phone, with most of the android phones and blackberries I have had you could turn off cellular service. I have one that I have turned the cellular service off, but have left the wifi on. The GPS chip works with or without cellular.

Aaron

wphamilton

To save battery:

I usually just set the Nexus 7 to airplane mode when I don't need to be connected.

I also use one of the toggle apps (right now using power toggles) for a home page widget to toggle wifi, gps etc. Since it's easy to toggle I don't get lazy about it and everything stays off until I want it.

Also, everything that automatically updates and syncs is set to do that manually, where that is an option. e.g. everything under accounts, email, weather app etc.

Having the screen all the way bright will also draw the battery more. I keep mine about halfway since "auto" is usually too dim for me.

The case for my Nexus has a little magnet which shuts it down when I close the case. I figure that saves a little on the battery since it never has to wait on the timeout to shut the screen down.

seeker333

I've had a chance to experiment with CoPilot. It seems to work very well, better than the other two offline GPS Nav apps I tried (osmand, mapswithme). The user interface and Points of Interest database is superior on CoPilot. Easier to finds locations that you want to define as destination for the nav calculation.

However, there's a problem - CoPilot uses all the tablet's memory (~5.5GB of the 8GB I had left free), and unlike Osmand and Mapswithme, there's no way to move maps to the sdcard. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that CoPilot uses a huge map - the entire USA vs smaller individual state maps with the other two apps. This apparently is a widely recognized issue with CoPilot but after more than a year of user complaints the owners have not provided a solution.

I've found a workaround procedure wherein I move several files to sdcard manually and edit the CoPilot configuration file to direct the program to the new file locations. Although it seems pretty simple, I haven't tried it yet because the procedure is written for an older version of Android, where the folders/directory structure is different from my version. I don't know much about Android, so I'd have to learn a bit before I'd have confidence to do it. I suspect once I've moved the large files to the sdcard CoPilot will work like a charm.

wahoonc

Try MapFactor Navigator. You download only the maps you need. I don't see the need to carry a map of CA when you are touring in MA or vice versa.

Aaron

bwgride

The paid version of CoPilot allows one to download individual state maps.

Tandem Tom

As the OP I have a question about this mapping apps. I have Map With Me( paid version) & Osmand(free version). Is Co-Pilot that much different /better?
Thanks!

bwgride

I provided some comments about CoPilot in post # 17 of this thread. I recommend that you download trial versions of each app and compare them. I tried about 10 navigation apps and found CoPilot to be one of the best for the cost so I went with that. I also found GPS Nav & Maps (by skobber) to be very good. For general reference and navigation CoPilot would be difficult to beat.

mark03

I bought a Nexus 10 (7's big brother) for my Netherlands tour last year. Best pre-trip investment I made. It's quite a bit heavier than the 7, but it was the only computing device I brought with me.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned my all-time favorite mapping app for Android: Locus Maps. The author is kind of a fanatic when it comes to fixing bugs and adding cool new features. It supports all kinds of bitmapped and vector offline formats, and online maps too. You can do cool stuff like snap a photo of a map, do a quick-and-dirty georeferencing, and then use it with GPS. When I first compared Locus and OSMAnd a couple of years ago, I felt Locus was the clear winner, although OSMAnd may have improved since then.

The other "killer app" IMO, are the free maps from openandromaps.org. They are OSM vector maps (which you can download and use offline) and themes which are customized for bicycling or hiking. They are available for most of the world, but especially nice in Europe. So in the Netherlands, for instance, you get a standard offline OSM map with the LF routes shown as dashed red lines and the entire node network shown as dashed blue lines, with all the node labels clearly marked. Indispensable! I imagine these should work with OSMAnd as well?

Re: navigation, I guess it works ok in the US. Going to Europe, I thought I had this all figured out. I wrote some Perl scripts to take the output of the very best online route planner (on the Dutch Cyclists' Union web site) and munge it into a GPX form I could import into Locus, complete with voice prompts so I wouldn't need the tablet out. Result: total fail! There is simply no way to capture all the subtleties of European road/trail intersections, routes are changing all the time, and even the best routing algorithms seem to "miss" some turns they deem too obvious to mention. If you are cycling principally on roads, maybe it could work; otherwise, I have resigned myself to periodically stopping and getting out the tablet. I can't see that changing until we have electronic paper displays with the size, resolution, and daylight readability of paper maps.

chojn1

Ever consider the galaxy note 3?
I took mine on our self supported tandem tours of Hawaii and Florida last year, and
it worked flawlessly. I made a case for it for the handle bar which make Google maps and gps instantly available. It survived a downpour in Florida much better than my wife's phone in her back pocket. The screen size is perfect for the GPS and for reading Kindle books. It is also bright enough to be readable in daylight. I have mine hooked up via bluetooth to my helmet headset for handsfree calls. Battery will last the entire day if the screen is off until needed. At night, 4G/LTE internet, for route planning and entertainment, is easily accessible without another device. Very convenient!
CJ