michaelnel

Yep, agreed.

My Nuvi 1690's routing is on crack sometimes. Sometimes when on a route I know well it will recommend I drive miles out of my way, then make a U-turn and come right back to where I am so I can proceed to my destination. It has done this a bunch of times, I reported it to Garmin support and their "solution" was to do a factory reset. Naturally, that had zero effect on the problem. They had, as usual, no clue. That was back when it was still under warranty. I gave up on it and just assume that when it makes lame suggestions I should just ignore them and it will recalculate, but the net result is that I really can't trust it in a situation where I don't know the area. Typical Garmin software / firmware quality.

Actually, what I meant is that the number of geocachers is miniscule compared to the number of smartphone owners. Not geocachers who use smartphones, and not smartphones that are being used for geocaching, just geocachers vs smartphone owners.

That is completely, laughably untrue. The "huge demographic of geocachers" is only huge in your mind. It is a miniscule number compared to smartphone owners, and in fact is a very small proportion of even GPS owners.

I was out all day yesterday with it and put it on charge when I got home (it charges through the USB mini port). It only took about 1/2 hour to charge to where the green charging light went off, indicating full charge. I have not run it longer than a day without charging it so I really don't know how accurate that value is. But the folks on gpspassion.com seem to have been getting numbers like the published rating for years on these things. A direct answer to your question is this though: I have not yet had to charge it. It was almost fully charged when I received it and my usage so far has not ever gotten it down to the level where the red "low battery" LED comes on, which is when you HAVE to charge it.

GPS position accuracy isn't really a matter of what software uses the information. The GPS chip in your phone reports the same position to the phone regardless of what software you use to make use of that data. If you want to drastically improve the performance of your smartphone's gps capabilities, add an external bluetooth GPSR such as the Qstarz BT-Q818XT. That's what I'm using with my HTC Android phone and the performance, accuracy and sensitivity are better with both C:GEO and the official GC app than any of the 15 Garmin, Magellan and DeLorme dedicated GPSRs I have owned. Your phone's internal GPS is also a battery hog. If you turn it off and use the Qstars instead, you save on the internal battery usage plus the battery in the Qstarz unit lasts up to 42 hours on a single charge.

Went out caching today, found 16 of 17 walking through the dense tree cover of Golden Gate park. Funny, everything worked perfectly, time after time, no lockups, no harware problems, compass worked right.

Monoprice.com has a nice selection of external battery packs for your phone too.

Get an external gps such as the Bad Elf and an Otterbox Defender.

Magellan eXplorist 710 does show the pictures, if you load them via GSAK. Likely the 610 and 510 do too. I know the pics aren't in the .gpx files, but GSAK goes and gets them and will download them to the unit if it knows it's an eXplorist x10 series machine, and the x10 will display them inline just like a smartphone does.

It'll work. It may take some time to acquire a fix the first time down there (the GPSR will be upside down, and that gets them confused until they figure out the sky is upside down too), but after that it will work fine.

They replied to my emails too. But I'm not looking for a pen pal, I was looking for a GPSR that works the way I need it to, and the Montana never did.

I bought my Qstarz BT-Q818XT GPSR "puck" from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001R1OO1W I was able to find a cache easily today that I failed twice on previously with my Garmin Montana 600. The cache is hidden in a dense grove of very big and tall redwood trees. On my past two visits there with the Montana 600, the Garmin was jumping all over, indicating 30 to 60 feet accuracy... "it's 62 feet over there" (go over there 62 feet) "it's 85 feet over thata way" (go thata way 85 feet) "Oh, it's 45 feet over there", etc. Ooops, unexpected shutdown, etc. Very frustrating. My Qstarz was reading 7-10 feet accuracy the whole time I was in the grove and led me directly to GZ. Stable and consistent. It uses the MKT vII chip with 66 channels and -165dB sensitivity, so it performs really really great in concrete canyons and tree cover. I just threw it in the top compartment of my hydration pack, got a Bluetooth pairing, and didn't have to touch it again all day. It even worked great when I took my pack off and was crawling around the tree on my hands and knees 20 feet away from it. Awesome little device!

Install this: https://market.android.com/details?id=googoo.android.btgps

Smartphone + Otterbox case + external bluetooth GPS. Works better than ANY handheld GPSR I have owned, and I have owned a lot of them. It also does a heck of a lot of other things that handheld GPSRs don't do. The only shortcoming for me is screen readability in bright sun, but I can read it fine, just not as easily as a TFT display.

Don't buy Garmin maps, get the ones from http://www.gpsfiledepot.com and the Open Street Map project http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/. Just say no to overpriced Garmin maps.

With my phone in an Otterbox Defender case I would put it up against any handheld GPS for ruggedness. Not for waterproofness though. And for battery life, I have a small 4800mAh battery pack in my backpack that will recharge my phone 4 times in the field. If you pre-cache google maps (a feature in the latest release for Android), and load PQs before heading out (just like on a handheld), you can run the phone in airplane mode (radio and wifi off) and battery run time is long. You don't NEED cell access if you plan ahead, and the planning ahead is no more involved than with a handheld. The best thing is, I no longer have to deal with the fools at Garmin.

Cell phone GPS gets a bad rap because of the internal GPS built into so many phones today. It's really an afterthought, and is a required component for Android phones. Manufacturers put in the cheapest chip they can with a tiny patch antenna, and the result is good enough for drunks who want to find the nearest bar in the city, but their sensitivity, precision and accuracy falls short of what you need for geocaching much of the time. You might want to try an external bluetooth receiver. I am using a Qstarz BT-Q818XT with my HTC phone. The Qstarz unit performs better in concrete canyons and heavy tree cover than any dedicated handheld GPS I have owned, and I have owned 15 of them over the years. It has 66 channels and -165dB sensitivity. You can pick these up for about $70. It's a tiny thing, about 1/3 the size of a deck of cards, and runs up to 42 hours on a single charge of the included Lithium Ion battery pack. You can put it in your hat, in a backpack or pocket and it performs solidly and accuracy. Supports WAAS too.

Naw. After 14 or 15 of their devices, I'm through with Garmin. I am quite happy with the solution I am using now, more so than I ever was with any Garmin device.

Thomas Distributing is a great place for Maha batteries and chargers. I have been buying from them for years, they are very reliable and prices are good.

I have been pleased with the Maha Imedion batteries (similar to Eneloop, but 2400mAh capacity), with a Maha MH-C401FS smart charger: http://www.mahaenergy.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=426 http://www.mahaenergy.com/store/item.asp?idproduct=178

You don't own a Montana, do you? If by "mainly bug free" you mean the Montana doesn't burst into flame and burn down your house when you power it on, I'd have to agree.

The Dakota has been out long enough for Garmin to have bungled their way through fixing the major bugs. The new Etrexes will be loaded with bugs. If you don't mind paying hundreds to be an unpaid alpha tester for Garmin, go for the new one.

They didn't mention the compass & routing issues? Those are the most serious bugs the Montana has! Glad mine is on its way back to Amazon.

Sorry to hear you are still going through all those issues, yogazoo.