Smart phone durability
 

Will a smart phone live through rough trails when mounted to handle bars? I have killed phones and cameras when placed in the tank bag on my dirt bike. Only GPSs made for motorcycles have held up. Looking to mount an Apple phone to the handle bar on my Farley. Would like to hear the experience others have with a bike mounted phone on very rough rides. Thanks in advance.

I don't think all the vibration will do it any favours. Why not just get a Garmin/Wahoo/etc head unit instead? I carry my iphone in a pouch in my pocket so it doesn't see any of the vibration.

The super thick, double layer otter box cases should protect it just fine.
Mine has gone through way more than just some bumpy terrain, no issues.
It does make the phone significantly bigger and heavier though - still fits securely in a mount

I'd say the high speed vibration kills phones more than the rough ride. Motorcycles have the engine buzzing the handlebars and phone.

As for a fat bike, I really can't answer that....

get an arm band for your phone.

Only reason I'm looking to use the phone on my bars is to try the All Trails app for routes when traveling to new areas. I'm not a fan of following routes with a GPS. At least on the dirt bike I found it took away my sense of direction. Without the GPS I generally know which way to go when trails diverge. With a GPS I seemed to loose some of that sense. Not sure if I will have the same experience with the All Trails app. May just try keeping in my pocket and pulling it out when I get lost. Getting to old to see the screen without readers anyway.

I'm not sure what kind of GPS you are referring to, but modern head units have full colour mapping capability, so they are not a lot different from using a phone. Garmin units for example use Apps like Trailforks for full trail mapping and TBT directions.

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/2...d-6c75e17fc567

You could run this on something like a Garmin Edge 530 and not worry about trashing your iPhone.

maybe not exactly what you are looking for but still amazes me to this day. i now keep the phone in my jersey pocket.

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...protected.html

I've have been through a couple Garmin Zumo units for the moto world. Last one is a Zumo 590LM. Big color screen. Could edit a map.ini file to change map colors. Works well for what it was designed for. Turn by turn works well enough on a very established trail system. Many of the places I ride are covered with a crisscross of trails. Trying to follow a track on the GPS I would go 30' past a fork then spend time messing with the unit to verify I was on the correct line. Silly when being on the exact trail doesn't matter. What I need is something with a satellite view to verify what drainage i'm in. Add a couple maritime units and Garmin has received enough on my money over the years. Just need a backup when I think I'm lost.

My question is for anyone who has mounted a smart phone to their bike. Did you have issues or no issues with vibration and shock from a rough ride? I may just go for it and report back of my experience. My phone is a couple years old and insured so noting to loose.

no issues. iphone 12 pro max on a quad lock with the quad lock case, around 3,000 miles in 5 months, mostly average-paving roads at roadie speed, maybe 5-10% underbiking on what some call “gravel” and i call rocks and dirt.

only 3,000 miles, yes, but not so much as a hiccup…

i use the out front mount flipped around to keep it over the stem. the arm probably provides a little dampening as does the future shock in the steerer… but not much.


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I have an acquaintance that mounts his phone on his bars & rides what look like rough trails. I mean that thing shakes quite a lot. doesn't seem to stop him from doing it. personally, I prefer a mountain feed bag, in my trunk on my rear rack, or in a jacket pocket when it's wicked cold. but then, I don't use my phone as a bike computer

I use this mount for my iphone 12 Promax with nary a problem. I see it wiggling a bit down there, but i think basically being a rubber mount keeps the vibrations down even if the phone does look like its dancing a jig at times

https://i.imgur.com/sOW270m.jpg

What mount is that?

it’s a quad lock “out front” mount. not the out front pro, the regular out front, but it’s installed turned around. i don’t really like the phone sticking way out in front of the bars.

The All Trails app is a battery eater. I have the app and know first hand. I tend to leave it off most of the time and only turn it on when I really need it. All Trails is a fantastic app but it is not designed for anything longer than an hour to an hour and a half of constant use.

Thanks for the heads up. Just purchased the pro. $15 holiday special. See how it works as needed. I'm also questioning the validity of their trails. One of their trails close to my house routes through a shooting range that's been there for 15 years. There use to be a jeep trail that is now down range. It might have been helpful today. I like to ride remote areas where I'm mostly off trail. Over shot my turn out of a drainage a couple times. Half the fun is finding my way, until the water starts to run low.

What I DO like about the app is the ability to download an area to use when out of cell range. I have followed it off trail to short cut, and found it dead accurate

You know what works well and is durable mounted to your handlebars on rough rides? A cycling computer.

First run with the phone on the bar and with All Trails. No problems with the phone. Picked up a Grefay mount. Like the price and the locking mount. Will move this mount to the motorcycle, not dirt bike, when I pry my wallet open for a more stream line mount for the bicycle. That Quad Lock mschwett uses looks sweet but too many other hobbies to feed. Daddy needs a new airbag for ski season and stuff.
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Used 80% battery over a 2 1/2 hour ride running in airplane mode. I expect having the display on all the time is taking more power than the app. Don't think I will keep the display on unless I'm actually trying to follow a trail on the map in the future. Liked having the satellite view with my location. It will work well for doing more exploring. I'm on a fat bike so no need for trails. Didn't think I would care about mileage but it was nice to know actual mileage. Went on a ride I do frequently that I had guessed was about 15 miles but found it was actually 21.

heavy usage! that app must not be terribly well optimized. specialized’s mission control app can easily run for 8+ hours in the foreground, screen on… i assume the minimal display with black background (assuming an OLED screen) is part of that.

It's not running satellite image mapping. Not apples to apples.

not sure how/why it matters what the source of the map “image” is, but it does have maps, cached and live. it’s not like any app on a phone is downloading the images directly from satellites ……………

but yes, the two apps are not identical. i also use rideWithGPS and with that and mission control both rubbing and onscreen for most of the time, battery life is around 9 hours.

The more information in the image the more power used. From experience I know it's true while running CAD programs on a laptop. I could be wrong about that theory with images on the phone. I will test that theory running just the map view instead of the satellite view with the same app on the same ride.

yeah, i'd be surprised if that was meaningfully true. it possibly requires more compute power / cpu cycles to decompress a compressed image with more detailed content. it certainly would take more power (again, tiny amounts) to decompress a higher resolution image. the biggest difference would be downloading the images - it definitely would take more power to download more/higher resolution images... but i'm not sure the difference between similar resolution map style images and aerial photography would be meaningful. i may also be seeing improved battery life because by now most of my rides are within the same 50 mile radius of where i live, and all the maps/images are already downloaded.

i think the screen is the biggest consumer of power, i definitely notice a bit of a difference if i leave it on the RwGPS map the whole time vs the misison control dashboard. an OLED screen uses much less power to display black than it does white...

Try running Google maps in Sat view and in Map view. The Sat uses a lot more power. Even the Topo view uses more power than the Map view. It's not the screen itself. It's the processing to render the image using the power. The more complex the image the more processing power it takes. Seems simple but don't take my word for it. Try it.