Originally Posted by
Burton
The problem with any and all of these is that they only work where there's reception, which usually means in rural areas and hilly areas - you could be left high and dry.
This is the first I hear of GPS not working in rural and hilly areas. GPS is not your cell phone, it has no "service providers" (unless you count the US military that put the GPS satellites up in the space to begin with). You WILL get your coordinates, provided you have line of sight to 3-4 of the satellites. That can be difficult if you're indoors or under heavy vegetation.
Some of the GPS enabled devices, smart phones in particular, download maps as required, using whatever data transfer plan available. That can be spotty. Traditional mapping GPS devices have maps built in, downloaded in memory, or sold on memory card(s), so they dont depend on cell phone coverage. They also have longer battery life, as they don't need to power the cell phone bandwidth. Keeping the GPS fix often takes enough power as it is.
--J