Originally Posted by
adamrice
There is a plethora of bike apps on the iPhone. So far I haven't used any of them, but the one that seems to get the most positive notices is MotionX GPS.
An unfortunate limitation of every phone-based cyclometer is that (
AFAIK) no phone has built-in support for the ANT+ wireless protocol that HRM sensors and rotation counters use. I do know of a sort of ANT+ gateway for the iPhone that rebroadcasts the ANT+ signal over wifi, and interfaces with a few apps that way, but that's an inefficient approach. I'm waiting for an ANT+ product that plugs into the accessory port. Preferably with a built-in battery pack to make up for the lousy battery life.
Thats why we stay away from the iPhone (for the moment) there are severe limitations on what you can do with the hardware, like programs running in the background and the like. We like producing for the competitors because they have a more open architecture, but they are much more varied in what they offer component wise. Ant+ is such a cool technology, a low powered networking solution that I'm hoping will enjoy widespread adoption in the mobile space. Right now we are currently limited to bluetooth syncing.
One of the ways velocomputer tries to tackle this is it incorporates more sensing technology into the device itself. The GPS can function as distance, speed, and acceleration while the accelerometer tracks cadence.