Originally Posted by
tankist
Strava uses GPS unit on your phone which is not very good (because it needs to save the phone battery). But to keep your stats and as a socializing place Strava is pretty good.
If you are using just a smartphone to record your rides, the app is going to use the phone GPS and thus will run down the battery. Every app does this. It’s a matter of degrees as to which app uses more battery life and it’s as well dependent on the particular phone as well as how good you are at configuring the phone to save battery life.
Or you can use a dedicated GPS cycling computer to track and navigate. Those units typically can save the rides and dump the data up to Strava. RideWithGPS, Garmin Connect, etc... these units cost $150 to $500 but do many things well. Other free apps are Endomomdo, MapMyRide, plus a few more out there.
I use RWGPS as well as Garmin Connect for ride tracking with a Garmin 1000. Works very well.