Solar powered is useless unless you have a lot of time or a huge solar panel.

Ever crossed a bridge while using Strava? The elevation data is not based on GPS.

Depends. For Garmins, it's pure GPS. For my phone, it projects a GPS position onto a height map. My Lat/Long position is pure GPS. Elevation makes a call based on the expected accuracy of the device.

Are you suggesting that it uses network location for elevation?

I'm just suggesting it's not displaying pure GPS with the elevation inaccuracy. Would be nice to see them re-caclucate elevation based off of GPS instead of terraforming everything.

It would be nice, but inexpensive GPS receivers have low altitude accuracy, so they'll probably continue to divide that functionality between GPS devices and smart phones.

GPS altitude is notoriously imprecise, even with good units. On a ride through the city when the chip knows where you are to within 10 feet in lat/lon terms, it can be 150 feet off for altitude. That's why Garmins - including the fancy but not brand spanking new anymore Edge 800 - will recalibrate themselves based on USGS DEM (?) at the beginning of the ride.

I don't know of any phones with altimeters in them, though, so it's probably a moot point.

Yeah, Motorla Xoom has one, but that feature doesn't seem to have caught on. In our instagram world, data fidelity is not a mainstream concern...

Update: Strava has used 1.57MB of data in the last week with a smattering of 1-hour rides.

wr, that's an awful lot of data for something so small. Are you uploading over mobile net? My OTG Droid Eris uses noting but WiFi to upload with Strava and had no mobile network to use, yet it records rides as accurately as on my regular phone.

There are rumors that the Wahoo RFLKT second generation will include an Ant+ relay plus a barometric altimeter. That would help improve altitude for smartphones.

There's no reason not to use wifi, I just don't care mobile vs. wifi ($30/month phone plan with unlimited text, unlimited data). There will be no difference in fidelity between wifi and mobile. The app did update once during the week, and that should be considered as part of the data budget. I think the longest I've gone w/out an update is two weeks (in the last year).