Anyone doing this? Seems a waste to have a decent screen and computing power wasted in a drawer at home and buying a standalone GPS. I’m guessing I will need a mount with a battery, a decent app, any recommendations? Will I need to jailbrake it?

I’m using a Z1 Compact for this. It’s waterproof which helps. I just use Strava though so it only records and it connects to the wifi when I get home or work to upload.

No network or SIM.

Same here, using an old iphone with no sim for strava

I use an old iPhone 5 for strava running. fits in the pocket quite well and nice n light. Although when I’m out on the bike, i take the main phone, as i can call with it.

I suppose I could chuck in a free payg sim and use it for emergencies though.

Back Country Navigator for the ability to download OS maps free at home on wifi then view in the field

Not iPhone, but have done this with a couple of old Android phones before I got a Garmin.

No SIM in there, and upload ride once back at home on wifi.

Worked fine, subject to any GPS limitations on the phone.

Within the limits of the hardware it’s an ok idea.

Battery life is unlikely to be on a par with a modern dedicated GPS and accuracy is extremely unlikely to be as good. It’ll be close enough for navigation and general motion tracking but if you’re a serious Strava fiend you’ll start noticing aberrations.

I use an old iPhone 4. It’s in a Quad Lock case and mount bought used off eBay. Works very well for my needs and I wouldn’t be too distraught if it broke in a crash compared to using my main phone.

The key issue is battery life of the phone which is nowhere near as good as dedicated GPS units so you’ll need to add a supplementary USB power supply. I use one of the Gum+ ones but there are plenty of others makes out there like Anker etc.

It’s a good way to make use of something that would lie disregarded in a drawer. Plenty of cycling GPS apps out there depending on phone and operating system vintage.

Battery life is unlikely to be on a par with a modern dedicated GPS and accuracy is extremely unlikely to be as good. It’ll be close enough for navigation and general motion tracking but if you’re a serious Strava fiend you’ll start noticing aberrations

I thought I phones were pretty good for gps

An iphone 5 is better than a fenix 2. But I assume bigger units are better?

http://fellrnr.com/wiki/GPS_Accuracy

Battery life is unlikely to be on a par with a modern dedicated GPS and accuracy is extremely unlikely to be as good. It’ll be close enough for navigation and general motion tracking but if you’re a serious Strava fiend you’ll start noticing aberrations.

i’ll give you the battery life one, but the accuracy will be on a par as the link above shows. they are all pretty much using the same GPS chips with the same antenna design.

smartphones get a bad rap as people sling them in a pocket or the bottom of a bag and expect them to perform.

put it on your bars, or top pocket of a bag, use a decent app that does 1s recording (strava used to be every 4s, wahoo app is every 1s, free and uploads directly to strava) and i think you’ll struggle to tell the difference.

only thing with not using a sim in there is it won’t get a-gps from cell towers to work out roughy where it is so a cold start fix might take a while longer.

I use my old Samsung S3 for recording rides on Strava now, mainly just for mileage and average speed really.

Didn’t have much choice though as I upgraded to an S7 which seems to have a GPS problem where autopause won’t work which totally messes up the average speed!