Does any one use a Nokia smart phone or an I phone's GPS for riding? I'm a bit confused as to weather they will work out of cell range. Is their GPS reliant on the celular network for a boost or will they work out in the sticks? I don't care about a bar mount as I'd keep it in my pack in a waterproof case.
Any advice and recomendations are appreciated.

Is their GPS reliant on the celular network for a boost or will they work out in the sticks?

As I understand it, they may use the phone network to get a rough initial fix, but can use just the GPS, so it doesn't matter if you have no reception as long as the mapping is loaded on the phone. I've used Viewranger on a Nokia touchscreen and it's excellent ime.

I have been using nokia sports tracker on my 5800(crap fone dont buy one) and its great to map out your ride and get a idea of the climbs you do

you can turn a few things off in the settings so you only use the gps and then its a free to use when ever you want

upload it to the sportstracker website and keep a track of your rides, you can even do live tracking but that will cost a bit on network charges and could land you in trouble if you keep it turned on and drive home like a loon, i once saw some live tracking of a guy on the M5 doing 120mph+ !

The nokia ones, you can get viewranger which works fine off signal, so you can see OS maps.

The applications on iPhone / Android that show maps don't work off signal. Viewranger is supposedly coming out next year on Android, I dunno about iPhone, but I guess it might well do.

On my N95, you get about 6 hours of GPS on a single battery using Viewranger. I hear it is closer to 2 hours on the iPhone, which makes it no use really – can anyone confirm that? My friend's Android G1 phone can do a good few hours of gps tracking though.

If you get iPhone, make sure to get the latest gs version, the original 3g one the gps really sucks (it is way worse than the android / nokia ones), and I hear they have improved it on the newer one.

Joe

HTC hero with my tracks app. Put the phone in airplane mode, get at least 4 hours worth.

Great advice, thanks guys. Nokia and view ranger it is then.