Some of us occasionally ride more than 6 hours. I'd want at least an 8-hour battery life. With the Garmin 500, I never have to make sure it's charged to 100% immediately before a ride (as I would with an iPhone).
Also, I wouldn't mount my iPhone on the handlebars--too much of a chance of getting damaged whenever the bike went down. Yeah, I keep mine in a jersey pocket, but at least it feels safer there.
Even if the iPhone could do everything just the same as a top of the line Garmin, would the display be as visible? Wondering ... I've never tried to use an iPhone mounted on the bars.
Originally Posted by
hhnngg1
The iphone has nearly all the tech specs to be the BEST bike computer on the market, even compared to Garmin's top of the line apps. It's simply way more powerful in terms of software/hardware than even the best Garmin units.
The one thing that's severely limiting its use on bikes preferentially: BATTERY LIFE.
Most accounts of use of GPS-apps on the iphone (like runkeeper), report near completely battery drain after an hour of use when recording data points as a Garmin would. An hour is really short to begin with, but then add the fact that you've now drained your phone to near zero, and you can see why it hasn't taken on broad appeal.
I can pretty much guarantee that if the iphone could get its battery life to go 6 hrs in "GPS-Garmin" mode without totally wiping out the battery, it would start to dominate the entire cycling computer market. The wireless abilities alone (such as real-time GPS tracking of athletes, sending workout data to the cloud in realtime, peer-to-peer communications) would kill anything Garmin could do in a cost-efficient way.