michaelnel

The phone and its data plan would normally be used for LOTS of other things besides geocaching though. And if you get the right phone, the right geocaching program, and the right plan, you will end up using very little mobile data in the field. NeonGeo will allow you to build mapsets using Mobile Atlas Creator and pre-load them onto the phone. If you combine that with Pocket Queries for the cache data, there is no reason for the phone to be using much mobile data at all, since you would load all that stuff at home over wifi or USB.

Is your new phone running the Android OS? If so, check out NeonGeo. Less than 1/2 the price of "the official app" (which is extremely buggy and has a development team that adds features nobody wants instead of fixing serious usability bugs), and is already a far better program that is under extremely rapid development by a guy with almost 6,000 cache finds to his credit. He (Mikko) understands what it takes to have a good geocaching program in the field. Check the website http://www.neongeo.com as well as the forum there.

The compass needle jumping around is also part of the symptom of the "flaky after 2.04 update" issue too. Many people have reported it in that thread. Hold not thy breath.

The main thing that makes it better is a super-responsive developer who really cares about the product and is a super-active geocacher himself. I like the way it uses a live map that is constantly updated with nearby caches as you move. I like the way it will show me spoiler photos if I want to look at them. I like the way the compass widget works, where the one in the "official" app is so flaky as to be unusable since v2.04. I could go on and on, but different features will appeal to different users. But honestly, it all boils down to Mikko, the guy who writes it, vs. the nameless gs coders who really don't seem to care about the quality of the app.

Get NeonGeo. It's the best geocaching app out there and is under lightning fast development with a super responsive developer.

600 is the base unit 650 adds a mediocre camera 650t adds mediocre 100K maps to the 650. You can get better maps than the T comes with for free. Yes, the gpsfiledepot and garmin.openstreetmap.nl maps work fine on all three. They all hold the same number of geocaches. The three are identical except for the the above points.

No, the issue isn't you, Russ, it's the Garmin CubeDood.

That's .signature material rat there!

... and setting it to "off road" once you arrive at the site is nonsensical. We are concerned with how to to get to the site. If we are already AT the site, we don't need a GPS at all. Further "off-road" is just another way of saying "direct" routing.

I will be interested to hear the results of your test. When I dealt with Garmin on the matter their response was: "I took a Montana out today to OX1AABN just now, configured like your unit, with a recent version of city navigator. The current behavior is disappointing. I had no problems with direct routing, but using the compass with city navigator was unusable. We will correct this." Funny how your guy said it was designed to do that, and the design guy I dealt with at montanabeta said the above. One of the two is BS.

The problem existed in FW 2.40 and 2.50, and I sent it back to Amazon for a refund. I have looked through the summaries of things fixed in subsequent releases and there is no evidence it was fixed in 2.60, 2.70, 2.80, 3.10 or 3.20 either.

They usually work extremely well for that.

That's exactly what the compass did on the two Montana 600s I had. Were you using direct routing or auto-routing? My Montanas misbehaved as you describe when they were in auto-routing mode with either City Navigator or OSM routable street maps, but the compass worked normally when I was in direct routing mode.

Yes, get this app: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2&feature=search_result

I bet the majority of people who use navigation systems in their cars don't even know they are using a GPS, and wouldn't understand any of this discussion if you told them.

No, it doesn't. If you have it plugged in with a proper USB cable it will power itself via that cable and the batteries won't be used.

I think the Garmin GPSMap 62S is the best handheld dedicated GPS currently available. Sure. I think the Delorme PN-60 is the second best one. It would be the first best if the screen wasn't so tiny.

Please do submit your feedback to the NG developer. He has been super responsive, but is unlikely to fix things you don't like unless you let him know about them.

That's a bug and should be reported here: http://feedback.geocaching.com/forums/75279-geocaching-for-android

It seems to me that Garmin is concerned with selling features, and the quality of their products has never seemed to matter as much to them as adding more bullet points on the marketing materials. And once the product is out there, they seem even less interested in fixing preexisting issues. Look at the Birdseye data SNAFU, for instance.

Both. The issue wasn't which compass widget was in use, it was whether or not auto-routing using either City Navigator or OSM routable maps were being used. The compass worked OK when direct routing was being used.

One great tip I read is to create an "UPDATE" profile. Since updates tend to whack only the active profile, simply switch to your UPDATE profile before applying the update, and it will then reset only that UPDATE profile to default values. After the update, switch back to whatever profiles you normally use and they should be unchanged.

It works fine for me, in fact I have downloaded a couple maps this morning. It's working for me right now.

Right on schedule... Sunday, a day lots of folks like to go caching, and the site we PAY to access is unusable again. geocaching.com is lucky they have a monopoly.

I think the big data consumer isn't the text-based geocache files, but instead the map tiles. If you use a decent program like NeonGeo instead of the overpriced, undercapable and buggy Groundspeak app, you can pre-cache map tiles, cutting way back on data use in the field.