I've experimented with using my iPhone/MapMyRide. Aside from occasional inconsistencies in the GPS, I've been moderately happy with the results. The main fly in the ointment? Two hours for a fully charged, no more. Also, on a hot day my phone will overheat after about an hour and then shut itself off to avoid cooking the innards, I guess. Many of my rides are much longer than two hours, so the iPhone leaves me high and dry after two hours or less, plus I'm suddenly out of communication if there's an emergency on the road. My read: a lot of promise, but not yet there.

Yep, the battery life is a BIG issue - larger and brighter the display, more electricity it eats. A phone is not good if you intend to have the display visible all the time. Then again, you could keep a phone for logging and use a basic bike computer for showing your speed and time.

I use a phone for ride keeping. It sits in my pocket, display off, recording GPS and HRM from my bluetooth HRM belt. After a ride, it's a couple of presses of a button to send that data to the internet server, where all the data is logged and easy to share to friends. There's also some analysis tools at the website. A 2-hour ride, phone in the pocket with bluetooth on (another energy hog!) for the HRM will eat up about 40% of the battery, so I guess it's about 4 hours max with BT on. Dropping the BT probably adds an hour or two.

The phone is a Samsung Galaxy Gio, pretty much a lower end smart phone and the battery in general isn't that great. I think any touch screen phone with GPS unit will do, even the cheapest $100 or so models have them now. The BT HRM belt is maybe about $75 , so not that expensive either.

Fun feature in some programs (Sport Tracker at least) is the ability to take photos and it automatically embeds them to the ride data, even shows up the location on map, I'm starting to find some use for that. Nice for trekking style longer trips, where you can stop and snap a shot now and then. Another good feature is in-program map display, I sometimes take my phone out to quickly check if I'm on the right road etc.

One interesting development, though: the "travel USB charger" battery thingies. One of these might hold 4x the charge of your cell phone does (my Samsung has 1350mAh battery I think, the travel chargers can easily hold up to 6000 mAh), and it's not a big thing carry one around on your bike for the cell phone.

I have a Samsung Fascinate and I normally have half a charge left after a 4 hour ride. 90% of my rides are under 3 hours, so battery life is not an issue with me. My battery would not last all day, but I have a portable recharger that is no bigger than the phone so I can easily recharge if I did an all day bender. I would be more concerned about something recharging me after riding all day. After 4 hours, I'm ready to call 911 and yell "Man Down".

If you don't mind screen off most of the time and using airplane mode, the Android platform works better than iPhone for battery life. I rode a century last weekend with at least 9 hours 20 minutes of battery life running three apps simultaneously: Strava, Endomondo, and Osmand (turn by turn voice nav).

It's 2012. And the marketing people know that there are different kinds of riders. Most people who want a heart monitor don't want an MP3 player. Some may want a mapping GPS while others want a great trip computer. Some see great advantage to being able to snap a few pictures or a short bit of video. My guess is we are 10 minutes away from having all in the same package in something not much bigger than the 500.
I use the Garmin GPSMap 60CSx. It records 70 kinds of rolling data and can lay it on streets or topos. It will aslo tell you the way to go but it won't monitor your cadence or heart rate. I have a Samsung Galaxy S3. It does everything including play music on lazier days but you constantly have to fiddle with it and you can't see it. Shame, it has a fine still and video camera for the size. I want the Garmin 500 because it has a critical function of being able to record cadence and heart rate but that's the only thing it does that my 60CSx won't do. I'm absolutely positive that all this can easily fit in a case the size of an iPhone. I'm also quite sure that we'll see this device in 24 months or less.



But for today, this is the clear winner.

I've got the garmin 800 and I love it. I love the fact that I can record cadence, hr, speed, elevation, grade and mapping all in the same small footprint unit. Furthermore I need to be able to see my numbers while I'm rolling, and having the device crammed in my pocket just wouldn't do. I host some rides and load maps into the garmin which gives me turn by turn directions, which is nice to have when I've got others counting on me to direct them through a new course.

On my solo rides, depending on the course, I'll use the ipod function on my iphone and listen to music. Beyond that my phone is only there to be a phone. I've tried MMR and it killed my battery on a 40 mile ride. Last week a few friends and I rolled 100, which would have exhausted my iphone battery, therefore I find the iphone as my data collection device an unacceptable solution.

In a pinch the iphone and associated app will work, but for my money having a dedicated bike computer/gps is essential.
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An external battery will take care of the insufficient battery capacity of the iPhone and other smartphones. As I mentioned before, an USB battery powered my Android phone for over 20 hours. I keep it on the handlebar with a smartphone holder, always in sight, unless it's pouring down with rain (if it drizzles, I wrap it in cellophane). Google Maps does a great job showing me routes that I want to follow, uploaded as a KML.

If you already have a smartphone, a phone holder and a USB battery are much cheaper than even an entry level Garmin, let alone the 800.

Where the 800 makes sense is if you also want to record cadence and pulse, not just your speed and course.

As for the iPod, I can't think of many places where I would consider using headphones on a bicycle because they insulate you too much from your environment. I would not want to put myself and others around me in danger. The first two rules in our group rides are "wear a helmet" and "no headphones!"

Do you run into overheating issues with the iPhone? Especially after wrapping in cello? On warm days mine will shut down ... I had under the clear map cover on my front bag and figured there just wasn't enough air flow to keep it cool. However I've also run into that same issue on rides over ninety minutes with the phone not under the cover. Really curious to find out if it's just my phone and local conditions or if it's a persistent problem for everyone.

I've been having good like with Strava on an iPhone 4. I turn off the screen and tuck it in my under-seat bag and it seems to read the GPS and Ant+ sensors quite well without losing a charge. Putting it on the handlebars worries me, more because I drive a fairly populated suburban area. Multi-tasking with cars on the road can be painful!

When the bike is in motion there is airflow, so heat should not be too much of an issue. I only wrap it in cellophane on days of drizzle, i.e. when it's overcast and usually not that hot anyway. I've heard of people having problems with GPs units when leaving the bike parked in the sun, but when I leave the phone on the bike when I pop into a shop (I don't live in a high crime area), I put the helmet on top to shield it from both the sun and strangers' eyes. I don't know about iPhones, but over the last 6,000 km neither of the two different Android models (Google Ion and Google Nexus S) that I've used on the bike has had any heat related issues yet, such as reboots or apps crashing.

The number one power draw on the phone is the display and I keep that off most of them time because my eyes are on the road.

On Saturday did a 165 km (103 mls) ride with daytime highs of 30-32 C (86-90 F) during which I went through 5 l of water and sports drinks. No problems at all with the phone on the handle bar!

I use 'Runtastic Roadbike' on my iPhone (best biking app out there imo). More than I need. With today's smartphones and the wealth of apps out there, I don't see a need for a dedicated computer.

I was surprised how cheap a battery replacement/extra battery for my Android cost. On Ebay
I can easily find my battery for around $3 or $4. Or the battery and charger combo for well under $10.
For me Strava doesn't eat much battery at all. Today I rode for 2:30 hours with Strava while playing mp3's on the highest volume (Sinatra, it makes the chicks smile) and came home with a battery life not even half gone. I do have my monitor brightness all the way low and no vibration that helps.
Hope it helps.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from...ptimus+battery

Agree. I would never use my iPhone as a substitute for my Garmin... unless I forget the Garmin for some reason.

There's a screenshot of an app I'm working on. I just put together the selecting the point on the gpx to start from and the highlighting tonight. I started with the overall timer function that will track the time until the next 1, 2, or 3, turns (it's selectable in settings from 5-60 seconds) and then alert people to the turn. It's speed sensitive so it uses your speed to calculate the time until the next gps point and then alerts you at the alert intervals you've set.

The "Next" button is going away soon since I now know how to programmatically click and you can select a row in the list and start from any GPX point.

It does the audio text to speech for directions as well but I have found that I'm going to have to run things through a translator of sorts so "Grouse Dr" becomes "Grouse Drive" instead of "Grouse Doctor".

One thing to note... it doesn't use map downloads at all. It's made to be EXTREMELY frugal on battery usage.. even going as far as using passive updates (it pulls gps updates from other apps on the device) and slowing down GPS updates when there's a significant distance till the next turn.