Anyone use a cell phone for live tracking? I'm looking into the garmin 810 vs smart phone for live tracking. I need a new cycle computer and would love to do live tracking. What works for you all?
Thanks,
Tony

I ride with a Garmin 800 and love it. When I ride alone, I use my iPhone to send a Glympse to my wife so someone will know where I am. After a 50+ ride my cellphone battery is low where my Garmin is still good to go. Don't know if other tracking programs use less battery power than Glympse but based on this, I would recommend the Garmin.

Note that the Garmin 810 needs a smart phone to do the live reporting of position.

I suspect that using the Garmin 810 as the GPS for the positions the phone reports will use less phone battery than using the phone's GPS. I doubt the Garmin 810 transmitting the info via BT consumes much of the Garmin's battery either (ANT+ is similar to BT and the cadence/speed sensors last quite a while on a tiny battery).

If you don't use the phone for navigation, you might be able to use an external battery to allow you to do tracking for a longer ride (which would be much cheaper than a Garmin 810).

can you turn the gps off on a smartphone without turning off the phone itself?

Yes. You can turn it off explicitly and implicitly (by not running anything that uses it).

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5467

On the iPhone, the location service is active when the arrow is displayed on the status bar.

If there are no applications running that use location services, the arrow isn't displayed.

Thus, you only need not to run any apps (or terminate running apps) that use location services to turn location services off.

My family all have Life360 installed on our phones (free app available for android and iOS both), so we live track all the time. I have mine set to update every 15 min or so, and my wife can force an update when she gets the willies when I'm out riding for a long time. No bike computer required. It does not, however, do constant, instantaneous tracking but that's a level of detail I'm willing to live without. I don't have any battery issues, but my phone has a huge battery. (Note 2)

I also don't have a smart phone, only a dumb one that I txt and talk on. With that in mine, what should I do? Oh and my contract is up so that's not a problem. Don't really think I need a smart phone except for live tracking. As I understand it, the smart phone will do the live tracking, right? And I would also have to have a smartphone to use live tracking, correct? What I want to do is share my ride data with my familly. I think that would help motivate me to go ride on days when I'm just not feeling motivated. They don't live nearby and I would know they would wonder why I didn't ride today so I would just go.
Please somebody help this baby boomer.

You would need a smart phone anyway to get the live tracking feature of the garmin to work. And smart phones, while super awesome, are also #@&#$ expensive monthly. But they're awesome.

Get a used garmin 500 or something and just upload your rides to the web when you're done. Then email your family the link. Now that the 510 and 810 are out, that would be reasonably inexpensive (I think). The bare unit was $250 new, I reckon you can find them for half that, and no monthly contract to fuss with.

On Android there's an app called OSMAnd (open street Maps) that can do live tracking.

The free Glympse iPhone/Android app provides live tracking.

I use the LiveTrack feature of the Garmin iPhone App with my Edge 510 to keep my wife apprised of my whereabouts when I'm out doing whatever it is I do on the bike. She says she likes it.

It doesn't even come close to draining the battery on the phone since it's just using Bluetooth to the Garmin instead of the phone's GPS, so I still have the phone for important things if I need it.

I use the phone's GPS with Glympse, previously with an iPhone and more recently with an Android. Battery drain is pretty minimal, way way less than when using the phone for nav on the bike. Of course the display is off and the only thing the phone is doing is periodically reading and reporting GPS position. I haven't quantified it but it seems after 3.5 hrs the battery is down maybe 20-25%... I'll have to check it more carefully next time I go for a longer ride.

About battery drain, I have an iphone -- i think it is a 4 -- and use Glympse. Often Glympse will stop broadcasting because my battery is down to I think it is 20-25 percent after about 2 1/2 hours on the road using just Glympse and listening to itunes. Wonder why my battery is not lasting as long

I sometimes stream music riding using the TuneIn Radio app. Drains my battery something over 50% on after 2 hrs, but I'm sure streaming takes more power than playing it out of memory.