Originally Posted by
Iride01
For bike packing or other touring, I'd probably have a Garmin Edge unit on my bars, and a Garmin handheld in one of the bags on my bike. The newer Garmin Edge units will communicated through the phone app to upload finished rides to Garmin Connect, RWGPS or Strava. Also, as mentioned if you see a route on RWGPS that you wish to ride, then all you have to do is pin it and it will be sent to your Edge device and appear in your route/courses list. I'm not sure if that is when the RWGPS app is also on your phone, or if this also happens with just the Garmin phone app. Strava probably does similar.
The hand held I'd just use for searching possible routes during the portions of the trip I'm not on the bike. The much bigger screen that some have makes it easier for me to look at a larger area of map at one time without having to pan around.
The other advantage for the Garmin Edge might be live tracking. Which if you are in cell phone service areas will send location information to selected contacts and they can see your location on a map. And whether or not you are still moving. Which if you aren't might get you help sooner since they can call you and see if your are okay.
The on phone RWGPS app has no interaction with the route downloading between a pinned RWGPS route and Garmin. That is all done as the connection established between Garmin and RWGPS, You do not need the RWGPS app on your phone for this to happen. The on phone RWGPS app does function well as a ride tracker and can be used to navigate RWGPS (or imported routes to RWGPS). It has various levels of functionality depending on what level you pay for. I have never used it even though I am a paid subscriber.