I’m about to get an iphone and was wondering if anyone had found any apps that were useful from a cycling perspective. The combination of open source software, gps and data connection has got to make for some interesting potential

Ian

Ian, I don’t have any experience of the iPhone specifically, but be aware that GPS kills the battery on a phone. If you use it on a long ride you could end up lost and a dead phone. Also, how do you keep it dry?

Here’s some info I’ve found through a websearch recomending Trackthing

iphone as a bicycle computer? Yea!

Capt- I’ve kept phones dry in the past using ortlieb document pouches. I’ve worked as an outdoor instructor for quite a bit so needed to keep a phone dry on the hills and on/in the water. The passport one has kept documents dry living in the back of a bouyancy aid during safety kayaking seasons in Nepal even.

Don’t think the touch screen will work through the bag though because of the way it works. Palms used to but they work on pressure

http://www.outdoorgb.com/p/ortlieb_document_a6_a5_a4_size_bags/

This does look quite good too http://www.ibikepak.com/

but be aware that GPS kills the battery on a phone.

And from what I read iPhone battery life isn’t to brilliant to start with 😕

I’ve used GPS on the blackberry’s I’ve had over the past few years and its been ok tbh. I think with a full charge before you go out it should be fine.

Been doing the research on this recently and the battery life on the iPhone is dependant on the settings you have. Push email for instance uses a lot of power, turn down how often it checks = significant increase in battery life

hmmmm, here are some more http://ruedatropical.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/iphone-cycling-applications/

iPhone cycling application links:

Cycling computer: Every Trail

Trails: Felix Lamouroux

Cyclometer: B.iCycle

Bicycle Gear Calculator: JP Martineau

iRPM+: Smheart Lin

myBikeApps: BikePower

MapMyFitness: iMapMyRide

Cychosis

Ian How have you been keeping? there are a few opportunties with the iPhone to benefit from the GPS feature, one is GPS tracker which uploads your gps location to the instamapper website so anyone knowing the url can track your progress in real time. The more frequently you upload data the faster the battery drain. We used it on the recent One Planet Adventure tour of the uk red grade trails one in the vehicle and one in a backpack on a bike. The predominant weakness of the one on the bike is forestry itself is not conducive to good GPS data then in dark steep valleys it is often worse and the kind of locations also have poor phone signals. The data we got back did give us a prety good idea where the riders were / had been but you could not use the data to measure or record the actual trail routes

there are a number of other gps devices that integrate your location with online mapping, iphones cant carry their own mapping yet. There in lies the problem the system is great for london where with 3g you can get all sorts of detail to help navigate the streets, but riding around Penmachno yesterday using TrailGuru in my backpack I could hear it continually pinging as it found or lost signal.

I have tested Trails and Trail Guru aroudn Llandegla and the Clwydians and although not as good as a Garmin GPSMap 60CS it gave an acceptable result which i could export out to gpx. I also have used imapmyride as well which is useful for online storage of routes. GB locate is good to give you your current OS grid ref. If you are near a free wifi or 3g Google earth is good but a bit slow under the gprs which is the norm for around out parts.

The iphone screen needs naked fingers, you cant operate it with full finger riding gloves on. Battery drain is an issue but I recently discovered that a tekkion ‘Mypower’ mobile Li battery pack

Tekkeon

that I bought to extend the range of my powerbook at bike events, that i had purchased an ipod convertor (which does not work with the iphone 3G) when used with an adaptor now available from Griffin that allows the iphone to use old dock power accessories means in my back pack I can get 5 or 6 times the life over the phones internal battery only, Tekkeon do a number of portable power solutions the iPhone users can take advantage of and many are available in the UK

other handy iphone apps.. flashlight . .can help at night to find stuff and give some illumination during repair stops on night rides,
pano for making panoramic images.
itimer gives timer delay and timelapse features to built in camera

for photographers and musicians there are many other handy apps

I’d recommend iTrail. Top app for the iPhone and ludicrously cheap.

Cool, thanks Adrian and Trevor, much appriciated

Some interesting testing to do

Yes, I know its sad but I do find this stuff interesting :-S

“but be aware that GPS kills the battery on a phone.”

“And from what I read iPhone battery life isn’t to brilliant to start with”

Just carry a spare iphone battery, oh, actually, err….

The battery life has been improved with the updates Apple have done.

And it can be worked through a clear bag with cycling gloves on, i’m surprised cos i didn’t think it would.

What would be brilliant would be ViewRanger – OS mapping – software for the iPhone. As I understand it, the problem at the moment is that the current iPhone software won’t let you run apps in the background, so makes it problematic if you’re say, using it to record a track. I think that’s going to change with the 3.0 version of the iPhone software, or something along those lines…

[and obviously ViewRanger would have to port their software to the iPhone as well, which could take them a while I guess…]

and obviously ViewRanger would have to port their software to the iPhone as well, which could take them a while I guess…

It’s not really a port, it’s a complete rewrite, given the way iPhone development is different to everything else in the world (as is Symbian development, where viewranger works now for that matter).

Joe