Meags912

I have used my smartphone as a GPS in the woods and it worked well. There was no cell service so we downloaded all the information for the caches we planned to hit ahead of time. Once I was out of cell range, I put it in airplane mode to stop searching for service. I only used the GPS with the preloaded cache information and the phone lasted about 6 hours. I think it works well but I would be curious to try a handheld to see if the accuracy is really that much better. $400 is a lot to spend on a unit that will only get me another foot closer to the cache.

I was caching with my phone today in rain and under tree cover. My phone get me within 10-15 feet of the cache. I have used my cell phone to cache in areas with no cell service, I just made sure to preload the caches ahead of time then I can put it in "airplane mode" so it does not continuously search for a signal. How does this compare to a handheld GPS?

I have been caching with my Droid Eris and it has worked well most times. A few times it is really far off or jumps around a lot. I have been considering getting a GPS for better accuracy but is it going to be that much better than the phone? I was looking at the Garmin 60Csx or the Oregon 450 at two possible options. I understand battery life of a handheld will be better than a phone, but otherwise is it a waste of money?