Forum menu
Please excuse my ignorance of 21st century electronics in advance.
I'm after some advice on Phone apps and GPS bike computers. All I'm after is something to record my distance and total height gain on each ride. I've done a bit of research into bike GPS's, but gather some are not very good at gathering accurate info on height gain(?).
Bit of background - The last time I used a GPS or bike computer was a few years back (big, heavy eTrex or something FWIR), as I no longer do any proper on bike training. I tend to just go out for a quick 2 hour blast on local trails nowadays, and am not bothered about distance and height gain.
However, I'm off to North Italy for a spot of biking in about 12 weeks and, based on previous experience, I know the distances and ascents are going to kill me (a lot of the rides involve about 900-1600m and 35 to 65km). The ascents tend to be very long and steady, rather than the short steep ups & downs that I'm used to. So, my plan is to start doing some training in readiness, so that I can at least try and keep up with the fat Swiss and German guys!)
I've resisted the temptation to look at Strava, as I worried I'll get hooked! But is this something that would cover what I'm after (or are there any other apps)?
TIA
to just measure those strava is the best but it wont do it as live. You dont need to get addicted you can keep everything private
MMMtracker will do OS mapping [ Memory map type] and the like and also allow you to know this as live
Battery power is a limiting factor and far more power is used with the later than the former IME.
ah, cheers for the info - I hadn't thought of the phone battery issue...hmmm
I guess it'd be nice to have the info live, so that I can keep an eye on distance and/or height gain while I'm out - however, it's not the end of World if its not live.
STrava will say distance but not height"live". Not sure of you can alter this or view on a ride tbh as I have never tried
Graham S from here uses a portable battery charger for his phone
10,000 [ roughly x 3 th esize of your phone] ones available for about a tenner on ebay but i assume they are less than waterproof.
Strava does post processing on their server to work out the height data
An edge 200 is a good bet. It shows information loive which is similar (10-15% difference) to what you get when uploaded to strava. Long battery life, small, simple and relatively chep.
I find Viewranger on the iPhone to be excellent. If you're not leaving on permanent mapping on the screen the battery life appears fine. For me it works a lot better than my Satmap GPS I had before it.
I've done a bit of research into bike GPS's, but gather some are not very good at gathering accurate info on height gain(?).
GPS is not very good at measuring altitude, but decent GPS units have a barometric altimeter which is calibrated with the GPS so it's nice and accurate. No phones have this.
Phones can be good but you don't get much battery life, generally, and they are much more fragile of course. I've had an Edge 305 for many years, it's great. I use it for navigation too by creating routes with bikeroutetoaster or similar, and uploading to the unit. Battery life is about 10-15 hours and if it runs out you still have your phone for emergency calls.
GPS is not very good at measuring altitude, but decent GPS units have a barometric altimeter which is calibrated with the GPS so it's nice and accurate. No phones have this.
Latest iPhones do, as do the latest samsungs.
Well bugger me backwards with a rusty fish fork.