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Smartphones and long rides: The Strategy

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  • January 23, 2014 at 5:28 pm #20551
    KiwiMike

    There’s a lot of discussion around smartphones vs. Garmins for long rides. In one corner, Garminados waffle about 15hr battery life, waterproofness and size, while in the geek corner Mobilistas tout cheap smartphones with a few extra batteries as the way to go, not doubling up on tech as the Garmin crowd carry mobiles anyway.

    I present proof positive that a smartphone – even one 4 years old – can do the job. This screenshot is 5 1/2hrs into a ‘ride’, recording with Strava and using Viewranger for navigation, at 25% battery left. Critically the Viewranger Trip screen has been on all the time, with the nav arrow and other information displayed – meaning it can do a ride of over 7 hours with the display on permanently. Brightness was turned down, but it was still quite visible. Also the phone was connected to 3UK the whole time, mobile data and WiFi turned off.

    Noting that if you set the screen to auto-off after say 15 seconds, you can wake it to check direction at an intersection, then it will go back to sleep automatically. This will dramatically improve battery life to about 12hrs in this case, as you see below screen power accounts for nearly half battery usage.

    So you have Strava logging, always-on navigation, plus can receive calls/SMS. With the option to turn on mobile data to check email if really needed.

    The phone in this case is a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, but for £40-ish you could have a Motorola Defy from eBay, rated IP67 waterproof and pretty shockproof to boot. Stem-mount it on £27-worth of Quadlock and you have a quarter-turn easy on-off solution that is weatherproof and can have its always-on runtime doubled to around 12hrs using £10 worth of extra battery. Or out to 24hrs if you have screen sleep enabled.

    If/when you do need to stop and swap batteries, a Strava TCX/GPX file can be joined using one of a few methods to give that all-important one long ride.

    The 4.4-star rated Viewranger app is free for Android and iOS. You can purchase Viewranger maps for less than half of the Garmin cost and the online route planning tool is genius. £90 gets you all of the UK (£199 from Garmin), or smaller bits are priced applicably less. Or you can download Openstreetmap / Opencyclemap tiles for free *from the app, on the mobile* and use them anywhere in the world. This can be done whilst on the road, no laptop needed – for example, using free Wifi in a café. Did this in Belgium last year- worked flawlessly.

    Hopefully this goes some way to clearing the air and giving people hope that quality, robust on-bike long-ride nav, logging and comms is perfectly do-able for less than £100.

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Viewing 15 replies - 31 through 45 (of 84 total)
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  • May 7, 2014 at 12:51 pm #770187
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    SB76

    And yes, it doesn’t make the
    And yes, it doesn’t make the most sense! The rules are changing but they were for any comms at all causing interference.

    May 7, 2014 at 12:38 pm #770185
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    SB76

    Dave Atkinson

    Dave Atkinson wrote:
    https://strava.zendesk.com/entries/21292027-Extending-iPhone-Battery-Life

    GPS wouldn’t be classed as dangerous by the CAA and FAA because it’s receive-only

    It is intended to be disabled however:

    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1355

    May 7, 2014 at 12:30 pm #770183
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    dave atkinson

    https://strava.zendesk.com/en
    https://strava.zendesk.com/entries/21292027-Extending-iPhone-Battery-Life

    GPS wouldn’t be classed as dangerous by the CAA and FAA because it’s receive-only

    May 7, 2014 at 12:04 pm #770181
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    SB76

    Dave Atkinson wrote:you have

    Dave Atkinson wrote:
    you have to be careful using airplane mode on some phones (including iphone) – the GPS will continue to work once connected, but if it loses the connection it *won’t* re-acquire it.

    Really????

    I find that difficult to believe but still highly believable, the whole point of airplane mode is to disable those parts of the phone that the CAA and FAA oddly believe to be dangerous to the systems of the aircraft. A GPS connection would most certainly fall into that category.

    I cannot believe that to be a design intent, more likely a bug – So dont shout about it…

    May 7, 2014 at 11:45 am #770179
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    dave atkinson

    you have to be careful using
    you have to be careful using airplane mode on some phones (including iphone) – the GPS will continue to work once connected, but if it loses the connection it *won’t* re-acquire it.

    May 7, 2014 at 10:14 am #770177
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    Harryakadave

    On a 16hr ride last year I
    On a 16hr ride last year I used my Garmin 310 (no HRM to squeeze a bit more battery out), I carried my iPhone 4s but had to use Google maps a few times, only checked it half a dozen times but it really ate into the battery.
    I must admit till I read this I didn’t know Strava would still work on Airplane mode. I sometimes carry a Monkey Charger to boost the phone battery, think there’s smaller better ones out there now.

    May 6, 2014 at 11:15 pm #770175
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    CreativeLock

    I’m buying one, although this
    I’m buying one, although this is mainly because I’m doing a lot of touring in Europe over the summer so I can’t use my mobile whilst abroad – and I can get a decent price on the 1000. £370 (potentially £350) on it.

    May 6, 2014 at 7:39 pm #770173
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    Tom Amos

    Trust me, I’m interested in
    Trust me, I’m interested in buying one. I just wonder if I’d be better off buying a new smart phone. My current one is ok for strava but the screen is not so great. I’m still tempted by the Garmin.

    May 6, 2014 at 7:31 pm #770171
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    parksey

    Tom Amos wrote:So noone is

    Tom Amos wrote:
    So noone is going to buy the new Garmin Edge 1000 then?

    I don’t know much about this area but it does strike me that for the cost of the Garmin you could buy an extremely impressive Smart phone which is probably more powerful. Or am I missing something?

    I expect it’ll fly off the shelves, but I’m with you, I just don’t get the point of paying hundreds for a standalone GPS when I’ve already got a GPS-enabled phone with all manner of (free) apps available for both navigation and performance tracking.

    May 6, 2014 at 4:30 pm #770169
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    Tom Amos

    So noone is going to buy the
    So noone is going to buy the new Garmin Edge 1000 then?

    I don’t know much about this area but it does strike me that for the cost of the Garmin you could buy an extremely impressive Smart phone which is probably more powerful. Or am I missing something?

    May 6, 2014 at 1:34 pm #770167
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    dave atkinson

    I use my finn on the stem and
    I use my finn on the stem and mount the phone landscape. you have to mount the phone in the same orientation to the mount wherever you put it. so landscape on the stem, portrait on the bars

    May 6, 2014 at 1:20 pm #770165
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    parksey

    Thanks for the input.
    Sounds
    Thanks for the input.

    Sounds like the Finn might be worth more of a look than I’d first given it credit for then, and even if it doesn’t turn out to be a long-term solution then it’s only a tenner ventured. If it is a bit fiddly to get out of the mount then there’s perhaps an issue with quickly being able to take a call, but I guess there’s speakerphone for that!

    Quick question to those that do have one, can it be used to mount a phone in portrait orientation on the stem, or only on the bars?

    Your point KiwiMike about having more to worry about than just a phone if you’ve hit something so hard as to make it pop out of the case is probably fair, I share the same broken Hampshire roads with you anyway, so good to hear relevant testimony.

    Once I get a solution sorted out, I’ll update with my experiences of using a waterproof phone in the rain.

    May 6, 2014 at 8:44 am #770163
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    dave atkinson

    parksey wrote:Interested to

    parksey wrote:
    Interested to hear your thoughts on this Dave, I’ve just got the Z2 handset myself and am also looking at options for mounting the phone on the stem.

    How do you get on with the Finn, particularly for a handset of this size? Whilst it’s only a tenner, I do have niggling doubts as to quite how robustly it will hold a £600 handset in place!

    I’ve otherwise been looking at the aforementioned Quad Lock, they don’t make (and aren’t planning to make – I did ask) a case specifically for the latest Sony handsets, so you’d need the universal kit which then just sticks to any old hard case. With the 10% code you get by simply signing up to their email list, the universal kit is a little over £20, plus another tenner for a reasonable quality case.

    As for your issue with using the side button to wake the phone, have you tried the feature to wake the phone by double-tapping the screen instead? I’ve admittedly yet to try this with gloves on myself, but I’m sure there’s also a glove mode buried somewhere in the settings too.

    Like Mike said, the Finn will hold pretty much anything smaller than a 7″ tablet. so you’re all good there. the main issue i have with it is that if you want to take your phone off for a quick photo, you can’t. it’s a faff. a quadlock would be better. especially one that let you mount your phone out front…

    i didn’t really have an issue with the clicky button. i just think it’ll be a bit more difficult with thick gloves on. at the moment, it’s fine. double click to wake could work, the Z1 compact has a ‘glove mode’ which makes the screen more sensitive but that could be A Bad Thing if rain triggers the screen.

    screens/rain: no, not yet, or at least not a *lot* of rain. i’ve used it in drizzle but not a downpour. i will report back when the inevitable happens

    May 6, 2014 at 8:44 am #770161
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    Paul J

    Not as good as airplane mode,
    Not as good as airplane mode, but if you still want to be contactable you can turn off 3G, leaving basic GSM telephone/SMS still on, and that will save a good bit of battery. ROMs like Cyanogenmod have a quick-setting tile for it, otherwise go into the settings.

    May 6, 2014 at 8:15 am #770159
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    KiwiMike

    parksey wrote:
    How do you get

    parksey wrote:

    How do you get on with the Finn, particularly for a handset of this size? Whilst it’s only a tenner, I do have niggling doubts as to quite how robustly it will hold a £600 handset in place!

    Having done probably 1000k on crap Hampshire roads using the Finn mount to hold an iPhone5, a large Android phone (both in and out of a pOcpac) and the stupid-large Phablet-size Quechera one Dave reviewed a while back, I can attest that the Finn is indeed Good Enough. Basically, if you’ve hit something so hard that the phone comes out of the Finn mount, you have a lot more important things to be fretting about than an insurance claim for a mobile. Like walking / breathing 😉

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