Ride With GPS Android App Now Available
 

Hey all! I am one of the co-founders of http://ridewithgps.com and wanted to let y'all know we finally got an Android app available on Google Play. We've worked hard to release something that prioritizes reliability, battery life, ease of use and device support in roughly that order. As a result, we are proud to have created an app that uses < 5% of battery per hour while recording, even while connected to a BTLE heart rate and speed/cadence sensors.

Bonus perks include navigation and live logging for our subscribers. There are no ads or upload limits. The app supports pretty much any BTLE sensor, including the Stages power meter.

Please give it a shot, and don't be shy about reporting any issues or any suggestions. We pride ourselves on being responsive to input and bug reports, so if something's not right we'll do our best to fix it.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...withgps.mobile

How much battery does it use with voice turn-by-turn navigation? I tried using the Cue Sheet app, but its turn-by-turn navigation really burns battery. Will give your app a try if it can navigate a 5 hour century ride without completely draining my battery. Not really concerned with data recording since there are already plenty of apps that do that well.

Hey, I'm always willing to test something out! :D I'll use it on tomorrows ride!

Johnny, I listen to audio-books via Bluetooth on some of my long rides. I carry a high-capacity external battery which extends phone "life" by 3X or so. These units are inexpensive and probably only weigh 1/3 of the phone, itself. It's a good backup to have even if you don't keep it connected in the event you run your phone down.

What external battery do you have that triples the life of your smartphone for 1/3 of the weight? I have one, but it is as big and heavy as the phone itself and most of the others I have seen are twice as big and heavy as my phone (too heavy for a jersey pocket). My Android phone is already fairly big and heavy.

My smart phone is a Samsung Nexus, fairly large. The external battery is an Anker 3200mAh unit which will completely charge the phone twice from zero battery.
Capacity 3200mAh; Output 5V / 0.6A; Input 5V / 1A; Weight 92g / 3.2oz; Size 104 x 56 x 10mm / 4.1 x 2.2 x 0.4in.

I've recharged my 100+ times at least and haven't seen any decrease in capacity. It has a short, built-in mini-USB cord which I connect directly to my phone.

It jumps consumption a bit, from 5% or so to 8-10%, but I haven't isolated that to be pure navigation, or also because I am constantly turning my screen on to verify, check out the map etc. Right now there are no off course warnings, which means you end up checking yourself fairly often in an unfamiliar area. We'll add in off course warnings in the very near future, which should help. Also, we'll be adding in different beeps for left and right, since that was the other big annoyance - having to look at the screen when sometimes doing 20+ mph!

Lots of work, never enough time, but we are continually improving the app, expect an update every week or so with bug fixes, small improvements etc. We are always interested in suggestions and feedback to help the process along :)

I occasionally use ride with gps to plan rides and to print cue sheets when riding while out-of-town on business. I look forward to testing this app. One question, can I download the data and save it to lets say Strava? Thanks....

You can export a TCX history file from the website, which you can then upload to strava. We don't currently have upload to strava direct from the app.

If that's the original nexus, it's not large at all and the battery life is the worst of any phone I have ever had the displeasure of using. I hated that thing. I stole one of my kid's eligible upgrades (ha ha, take that kids!) and got a Note 2, which IS large but the battery life is enormous too. YMMV. I think the stock battery for the N2 is 3200 mAh, compared to 1800 in the nexus (or 2100 in the not-very-extended battery)

So is the navigation feature something that you need to pre-program or is it more along the lines of what you'd expect in your car - turn it on, put in the address and go? Does it skew towards bicycle friendly roads? I've used google maps for that in the past, and just stream the turn by turn directions to a bluetooth headset, how is this different/better?

(NB - I only ever do it when my garmin 800 screws me over... sometimes that thing just loves to get me lost.)

One thing I really like about CueSheet is the one time fee to use it. I'm all for software developers making a living, but monthly fees are really overkill for casual users. I use your website a couple of times a month at most and really can't afford to pay a monthly fee for that level of service. Is there any way you can give users a small number of routes per month for free? I don't mind seeing ads when I visit your web site and am willing to buy an ad-free smartphone app.

Ditto this. If the app lets me enter an address and go, including bike trails and bike routes, that would be a positive. Unfortunately when I went to the website with a free account just now, creating a bike route for my usual commute failed (it said that bike routes for Google Maps is not available in the area, which is wrong). Switching to open maps, got halfway through, failed again. It doesn't seem promising, but I'm still giving the app a try.

??? The app is free and you can do a ton of stuff on the website for free.

Sorry for the confusion. I was talking specifically about the CueSheet navigation feature, which requires a monthly fee.

I hvae downloaded the app and have used the web based product for quite a while. Can the app display be customized? I would like to be able to see cadence and heart rate in addition to distance, speed and time. I don't have power, so that doesn't matter to me. Certainly would to others.

Thanks,
Roger

Is there an ETA for an iphone app. I'm excited to have discovered your site and would love to get it on my phone.

Unfortunately, without charging what we are charging we wouldn't have a business and an app to provide. Our competitors are all very well funded by venture capital investments, Strava to the tune of $18 million, MMR $15 or so million, both with the ambitions to sell for a very large chunk of money after getting as large of an audience as possible. Tacking on ads doesn't drive any meaningful revenue, certainly not enough to support developers. At least without doing really shady things like making the ads very easy to accidentally click and the like.

This is the reason we have a very full featured site with no upload limits for free users. It's great for 90% of people out there, and we pretty much support ourselves by the 10% that want to get the extras.

You can touch each field to customize it. We'll be very soon releasing a version that will require click-hold for 3 seconds to change the fields, to avoid accidentally changing things when handling the phone.

We are working hard to have a beta version in maybe 2 months, and a release in 3. Fingers crossed, our goal is to release by early June.