I obviously agree with your post, but I do think you could use a turn by turn program if you left Davis and ventured out into the Sierra foothills. Try some of the rides with Hammerin Wheels Bike club. Even though I live in Roseville I find I frequently ride unfamiliar routes posted by other cyclists. This one for example would be very challenging for you flatlanders (and me):

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/99872

Regarding Androids and iPhones, the Airplane mode switch does not cut off GPS when used with Android phones. But with iPhone there must be some other way to disable all the radios (Bluetooth, calling, data, and sync) without turning off GPS. With a dimmed screen and everything off except GPS and my voice nav program, I can enjoy long rides over 6 hours.

Oh, hey fellow Sac area rider. Yeh. We def have it easy here in the farm lands - Though, I'm just getting started again after some time off. So happy to have the fields to ride through

Yeh, as for turn by turn, i just have to make do. If necessary, I can wip out phone and check map - no not ideal, but I don't have 400 bucks for a garmin. And honestly, I had the 705 for a very short time, and hated the map interface. Though, i hear the 800 is suposed to be better?

My buddy is going to take me on a ride from Fairfield into Napa over some mountain next week. So I'll get my hill climbing in. Saturday I will probably do Cantelow Hill to get started.

and yes. that route looks very challenging. and i would totally get lost!

today i did a 38 mile ride to winters - though forgot to start the track on the phone (another drawback i guess) here is after i remembered to start it...

https://bit.ly/gHOlz7

I like the photo of you, the bike, and garbage cans in the background. Since I'm on the road, it reminded me tell my wife to take out the trash. But going back to your original question, seems that MotionX is pretty feature rich, but doesn't navigate like the 705, nor voice nav a route like my free android app. MotionX developers will continue improving this product, and I expect it to include turn by turn visual/aural navigation of predrawn gpx routes in the future. If they don't want to be rolled over by Google, that's what all these developers will have to provide sooner or later.

Just for grins, here's a photo I snapped on my rain ride today in the Bronx.



That's the fire station next to where my mother grew up. Because of the rain, I kept the phone safely tucked away, and found this spot with only aural instructions using my OsmAnd android app. What other apps can do that?

[QUOTE=sierrabob;12470770]MotionX developers will continue improving this product, and I expect it to include turn by turn visual/aural navigation of predrawn gpx routes in the future. /QUOTE]

actually, they make another app called MotionXDrive - which is a car GPS app - so the standard, landscape, garmin-esk layout - turn by turn, audio, rerouting, etc - but it's 1.99 per month... which i guess is still cheap at $24/year - but psychologically is still expensive so i think they excluded turn by turn on purpose -

nice photo of the bronx...

I don't use the iPhone on my "distance" bike, but I do run it on my commuter. As my commute is only like 6-7 miles each way I have never had an issue with battery life. As far as raw "ride" data it is no better or worse than the Sigma computer I have on my good road bike. It's also handy planning alternate routes around traffic and construction on the fly, especially when I am in Albany at school because it lets me know where one-ways are on a very large screen.

The problem with the 3Gs is that the battery life isn't great. Over the course of a normal day of cell phone use I will routinely run down 3/4ths of the battery because the screen uses so much battery. When I combine this with bicycle use I often have to plug the phone in well before I head to bed because it is totally dead. It is a very capable device, but a dedicated instrument will always work better than the compromise.

The iPhone does have one upside though, on my summer commute I have 4 foot(minimum) shoulders the whole length of my ride. The iPhone will play Slacker Radio at me loud enough to hear but not loud enough to drown out important traffic noises through its built in speakers. It makes the ride a heck of a lot more fun!

I use the mapmyride ap as it syncs to mapmyride.com and use pandora concurrently and batt life isnt the best but it will do great until I get my 705.

That's the trick -- a lot of people don't think of riding for five hours at a time. I don't bother running my phone to track rides for the same reason, either. Shoot, I don't even record my rides...