I recently completed a 550 mile ride from Grand Rapids, MI to Minneapolis. This was my first tour in 30+ years. I used a Planet Bike Protege 9.0 wired computer, along with my iPhone 4s. I preplanned my route on Ridewithgps.com, and created daily cue sheets. I had also bought the proper Wisconsin bicycle maps to see what roads were considered bike friendly. I utilized a Topeak iPhone ride case that worked relatively well (more on that later). In addition I had an external battery for the iPhone.
I used the bike computer for recording mileage, speed, etc. I kept track of my distance to the next turn on the bike computer. As long as the street was there when it was supposed to be I never looked at the iPhone. However, in a couple instances it was nice to be able to take a peak on the map feature on the phone to determine the problem. Once it was a problem with my cue sheet and the other was that the road had multiple names. I only needed to use my external battery once during the seven days of riding. On this day I decided to change my route to get off a bike trail and get back on the roads so I kept the phone on most of the day!
The iPhone was an excellent tool when trying to use the wonderful bike paths in Minneapolis too! I could follow along and tell when I needed to switch to a different path. Can’t say enough about how great the biking was in Minneapolis. WOW!!!
The Topeak case worked all right but I’m not sure of it’s durability. By the end of the ride the arm that held the phone had loosened up and there was quite a bit of play in the connector. The other problem was that it holds the iPhone in a waterproof bag, which worked ok, except you couldn’t plug your external battery in while you rode.
I was touring solo, so I used the Life 360 app to allow my wife and son to follow my progress. This decreased my wife’s anxiety about me touring alone.
All in all the system worked well. I’m glad I had the iPhone with me! Googling motels to check rates was helpful. I had a bike manual app on the phone. It was a great tool to take on tour.