Hey,

Currently I use my phone for my GPS device I have view ranger with all of the south of the UK OS maps and some of north.

The problem is it tends to run out of battery quickly and its difficult to view as its normally in my pocket/bag.

So I started to look at the garmin ones thinking like £50 but they look really expensive and dont come with any maps.

Would it be possible to buy a cheap android and turn off all the phone stuff/wifi/etc to save battery and just use it to run view ranger ?

Often the cheaper slower phones also have much better battery life ?

I’d just need to get a cycle mount then.

try putting it into flight safe mode and seeing if you can just turn the GPS back on. My Android phones let me do this and it gives me more than enough battery for a days riding/hiking.

But I am now using a Garmin Oregon 600 with OS maps and bike/kayak mount. this works really well as the screen is extremely readable in bright sunlight with the backlight off meaning I can leave the screen on permanently with it mounted on the stem and still easily get a days use out of it, not cheap though

Have you tried turning all the radio stuff off on your current phone to see how long the battery lasts when all it’s doing is GPS? If you have wifi on all the time it will be wasting power looking for a network, and the actual phone connection turns up the transmit power when it’s having trouble finding a cell tower, so if you ride into any bad signal areas (or it’s in your pack next to your foil-wrapped sandwiches!) it will use quite a bit of power doing that. If you put it in flight mode that should turn off all the bits that transmit, which is what uses the most power.

Of course you won’t receive incoming calls that way, but I have mine on silent mode anyway while I’m riding as I certainly wouldn’t stop to answer it! Your main issue then will be the screen, as you’ll presumably want it on most/all of the time to see the map, and the screen eats up power too, especially if it’s set to max brightness which you might need for outdoor use. If you could live with just turning it on when you actually want to look at the map then that would help a lot. The only way to be sure how much all that would help is to try it and see how long your battery lasts.

Another option is to carry an external USB battery pack that plugs into the phone and feeds it power (assuming your phone charges from USB). I’ve used them before when away from civilisation, and you can get them either with a rechargeable battery built in or to take normal batteries such as AA or AAA so you can carry spares if you find you still run out, though I doubt you’d run one set flat and flatten the phone battery in one ride. The only thing with that is they’re not usually very rugged so I don’t know how well the USB connection into the phone would stand up to being knocked about on the trail and you’d need to make sure the whole thing is waterproof.

Or just buy a Garmin! But you’re right that they’re generally not cheap and often don’t come with the map you might actually want to use.

hey guys cheers for the advice. yeah tried a few of the tricks mentioned ie turn off wifi.

Kinding thinking if I could get a cheap phone for £50 I could set it up permanently in these modes and would nt need to change it.

I have a sony arc that is locked (phone was lost, blocked by operator, then turned up at my barber shop). As far as im aware the viewranger app is installed still functions fine. If you’re interested in it let me know. The only issue i can see is that the assisted gps funtion wont work as it relies on the phone signal.

Have a read here: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/home-made-gps-with-mapping-and-tracking It should all work fine.

This might be what Im looking for

click here

Bit more expensive than Im looking for but come with a decent battery 2800mAh and a spare.

ah cheers nick looks good reading

with my Android, to put it in and out of flight mode is just a case of pressing and holding the power button. or have a power control widget on you home screen so you can quickly tap flight mode and tap GPS back on if you need to. no need to go through all the menus

something along the lines of this

Power Control Plusothers are available, just look for one with flight mode and GPS

then at the start of a ride tap the flight mode button to turn all the radios off then tap the gps button if you need to have gps on