1scubamike

Wait! What!?! Tadpole? This is the badge of shame that new posters have to wear? Also, did anyone notice a recurring theme throughout this entire thread? Give up?? The misuse of homophones, words that sound alike, but have different spellings, not to be confused with homonyms. Sorry. It was driving me absolutely nuts. I had to get it out.

Great discussion. Lively banter. My prefered (only) geocaching device is a Droid X. I jumped into this thread to see if it could shed some light on the accuracy difference, if any, between a dedicated unit and my business tool (crutch??). As I ask this, I completely understand that not all phone GPS(s) are created equal, as was previously mentioned. My old Samsung Omnia I910, for example, was extremely inaccurate and unuseable as a geocaching device. It locked onto a max of 6 satellites at best and only after several minutes. My Droid X quickly picks up 11 to 13 satellites and seems pretty accurate. Let me pause here to say that I don't like to brag, but I've successfully found 14 caches with the help of my 5 y.o. daughter. Maybe the best question to ask is this: Can we determine the accuracy of a device by simply seeing how many satellites it locks on to or are there other quantities we should measure, other than physically standing side by side with our respective devices. If satellite locks reveals accuracy, do you dedicated GPS guys pick up more sats? Would I do better with a dedicated GPS unit? The only reason I ask is that I've found my device to be up to 12 meters off, at worst, when I make the find. From what others have said, this isn't too uncommon, but I am curious how handicapped I am using this for geocaching. Also, you can flame me if it's important to you. It doesn't matter a great deal to me.