ohgood

yup, a friend had the same result here in the States. iirc it took a month or so to arrive, whereas i can order things from Oregon and have them on my doorstep in two days. if the quality is anything like most of the mad produced electronics coming from China (everything is made there now) i could care less about a warrantee/guarantee, as they work just as well as the iPhone/Samsung units they normally clone. and you're right, your phone is definitely better at hammering than mine is. :-)

How would you know that ? Because they placed their swiped ammo cans as new caches, and either we, or friends of ours found them with the original geocaching.com sticker with ours and the cache name still on them. "I thought that's how this game is played" was the common answer... Sheesh... I'm even more curious now. the same person that took your cache container/containers placed them in a new location with their own gc account, went through the processes of gaining land owner permission, getting good coordinates, passed the peer reviewers inspections, and it went live.... but they didn't understand how the game works for just logging a find on your caches ? was it multiple caches, all by the same person, or a one cache per person instance? very very odd set of events to actually happen more than once, especially with more than one person.

That's an Android, so it'll depend on the app. Generally the answer is no*, but you'll have access to OpenStreetMap in its many flavors (of which the popular OpenCycleMap is one), online or fully offline, so you may not care about Garmin maps. OSM maps are generally free BTW. Check out Locus Map (Free or Pro), with the Geocaching4Locus and Map Tweak add-ons. The latter gives you a huuge selection of online maps, though personally I prefer to use it in offline mode, just like the way handheld GPS units work. Here's a similarly rugged Blackview phone running Locus, in airplane mode with an offline OSM map shown; the map is free (donationware) from openandromaps. Add the BRouter app (bike router) and a sultry voice, and you can get turn-by-turn directions down the trail to your next cache. (* Locus actually does have basic support for unlocked Garmin IMG maps, undocumented and unsupported. But with OSM, I no longer care.) PS, I watched that video. The Nomu doesn't seem to have enough heft to make a good hammer; the Blackview, well, it's a brick. When I drop it in my pants pocket, I find myself pulling the pants back up again.) lol I think you're right, it needs a iPhone or three taped to the back to give it more mass. the BlackView is super strong, and reviewers are raving about it.

Will it read/display Garmin maps? If so I'd anti up $130 for a test drive. Thanks Garmin maps are not special, but yes you can display .IMG and .map files just fine. it's better to use Open Street Maps since they are free , higher detail, and easily edited to reflect updated road systems. locus has a built in map downloader and also has a HUGE list of online maps available to download.

1 developing a new application is generally more expensive than maintaining an existing application, unless there are royalties in the existing. i have no financial data to back this up, just common sense. 2 third party applications do more than the official gs application does. there would be no cost at all in allowing those third party (or the official) applications to view all caches, all terrains, and all difficulty ranges of caches. the main thing here is that the current subscription nagging is bad for business. these threads all saying similar things should be a good indicator, even if the people in charge do or don't use them, do or do not like them, do or do not want applications at all. side note.... just by the shear numbers of phones in pockets, it makes sense to provide an application FOR SALE to the millions of possible smartphone users. if it's really true that smartphone users are -less worthy " or "less involved" than it also makes sense to try and SELL THEM SOMETHING than to drive them away with nags and begging for money. please read this with an idea that it's for gaining more users, more aspects/ideas, and not for excluding any groups. if people want to cache with compass+maps, tailor a map set for them and SELL IT, but don't drive them off by saying they can't even see where things might be. just ideas.

Thanks for putting caches out there. Too bad gs'ing is shooting their own feet with bad decisions lately. If there is a positive to the REALLY SCREWED UP APP and recent panhandling for money in every possible way that gs is doing, maybe it's that the members are actually removing / archiving caches again. Hopefully yours will continue for a while with your (THANKS!) lower t/d ratings so that people can find and enjoy them, instead of falling for the begging-for-money scheme gs is doing right now. Give it a little while, as the app usage, and subsciptions really start to fall off, they'll wise up.

How would you know that ?

The fine print. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/561269#overview planned obsolescence, well done. who will be the early adopter ?

I missed that one. where did you find that info ?

I'm curious what y'all are calling customer service for? in the last decade I can think of one instance of calling customer service, for a defective dsl modem. I always figured if the extended warrantee or customer service were big selling points, what's inside the box must be junk, and picked a different vender.

SOLDERED IN BATTERY??? no caching no turn by turn no touch screen (so no route or track planning/editing/etc) no wifi (for loading/sharing maps and large files) no Bluetooth (real Bluetooth, instead of something that requires an app and smartphone to share files) no NFC (not a big deal, very few standalone have NFC anyway) no querty for logs(if it did support caching at all) no chirp no camera (one device instead of three) I haven't seen what the track recording limits are yet. the only videos on YouTube so far do not show any of its functionality in use, just static images. this one may do the very best yet of displaying what it's really good at: teaching you to use a smartphone for mapping, and charging you monthly fees to send text messages from anywhere in the world to someone who doesn't care that you just left camp. a smartphone (OK OK, stand-alones work fine for hiking too) and a plb is a much more sane combo at this point. wait and see the unboxing and first use videos from real people. I bet the marketing is way way way over selling its usefulness, and completely skipping over its flaws.

if there was a "like" button, i'd smash it

the whole point of caching is to walk away from things that are stupid. like arguing with real life people over the lies someone else said about someone else's opinion -on some TV show last night walk away, walk faster

nomu s10 it has larger display, bigger battery, bigger internal memory, more RAM, will hold more waypoints/tracks/routes, 5000mah replaceable battery, better use interface, more mapping options, more media import/export file types, and if you need to hammer in some nails, it's good for that too. $130 and will probably outlive your affinity to drop test things

I always try to find a cache using ONLY the description and my geo-senses. That's what the CO intended. If I get frustrated, then, and ONLY then to I turn to the encrypted hint. If, after a while I STILL can't find it, I'll read a few logs. I never look at photos in the field, because too often, pictures are spoilers. Early on, I looked at a picture of someone's little kid holding a cache, standing in front of a rock cliff with LOTS of tricky niches. The kid was posed, pointing at the VERY identifiable specific hidey-hole. My point is, try to find the bloody thing the way it was intended to be found. When you write your logs, DON'T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY!! Why would you do that? How disrespectful to the CO and the work he or she did! Have you ever been in the process of telling a joke, only to have someone wander by and blurt out the punchline? Now you feel like an idiot, and everyone kinda wanders away. "Hey that was a great joke! I would have thought it was funny if I had been allowed to hear it as a joke." "Hey, that was a great cache! I would have really enjoyed finding it if someone hadn't given away the hiding place." But, many people people only want the quick smiley. and don't care about the game as I choose to play it. <sigh> ways to get to and find a cache: gps cords well established trail right to it messaging cache owner phone a friend unencrypted hints pictures none of them are spoilers in the sense that a punchline to a joke is..... because you have the choice to use them or not, but the punchline that is yelled as he walks by its not optional. imagine being given a history puzzle to solve, instead of gps coordinates, yes, coordinates are a crutch or "spoiler" in the same way that a picture pointing to the cache is.

maybe you could just include waypoints with your gpx track ? it would mean the standalone user would have to turn on waypoint notifications , and their standalone have the ability to play the audio note or display the message (text/picture?) you included with each waypoint. can they do that ? if they can't do that, you could always provide two gpx files, one for the track and the other for the waypoints, then turn on proximaty alerts for your waypoints. should be pretty easy, if you have users familiar with their units.

Careful now. Don't strain yourself. Although, since you cache with a phone only, this might be a reasonable goal. (kidding, kidding) :-)

there have been (very few!) people grumbling about geotagged photos being used to skip puzzle/multi cache steps lately. geotagged photos are very easy to produce with a smartphone, and you probably already have a few if you're taking photos / videos with your phone at parks/caches. it's VERY handy for recording hikes, as you can record a gpx track while hiking/caching, and then overlay your geotagged photos onto that gpx trail, if you're using a really good mapping application. just be aware if you're counting on uploading a "woohoo i found it!" photo to your log that is geotagged, someone might get all huffy about taking a photo at their cache site. ya, you found it, ya, it's YOUR photo, but still, people are weird. just so you don't end up wondering what you did wrong (nothing, actually) in the event your photos start disappearing from logs. its a really good idea to store your FOUND logs offline, in case a cache owner or the gc'ing website ever trips over a power plug and 'accidentally' deletes your stuff. as far as just taking pictures to help with YOUR hunt, that's great, and a really good use of all the tools you have available. binoculars work really good too for some caches that aren't easy to get to, or easily reached without a lot of time spent rigging. if you aren't finding something that you think should be there, make sure the recent logs are all 'found'. a lot of caches aren't maintained. ;-)

LOGIC ! yep, i usually won't take the kids with me to areas that might have tent cities or tons of blue cans (creek donkeys/rednecks/similar) littering the ground. it's a lot nicer out and away from the easily accesible places, fewer micros, and fewer 'every 500 feet' placements.

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303 keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not. It makes a huge difference. I've been geocaching for many many years. I've used a dozen different standalone devices, I've used a dozen smartphones. I run a mapping project where I receive a thousand tracklogs a year. The difference in accuracy of location finding is substantial with WAAS on compared to off. I agree... Waas was developed for Aviation.. and is more accurate used right.. at least for me in the USA..I use my units now with Glonass and Waas on at the same time.. and find exceptional accuracy with it compared to other many other gpsr's and Garmins with non Waas..that I've owned over the years..since 1996 actually.. thank you for using that added accuracy and updating cache cords! it helps a ton!

1) sorry, i thought you had a device in mind that was the gold standard, since mine wasn't it. :-) 2) ... guessing ... 3) i run " GPS averaging " in the background, so when i stop and drop a waypoint is a pretty good cord. i don't know if everyones standalone does that while they are using other gps functions like navigation, i would only be guessing. 4) OK, i completely agree with that. :-)

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303 1) where in that thread do the posters realize that waas wasn't much more than a sales pitch? Not sure how that conclusion could be reached based on the thread you linked. One of the cachers that said they didn't have better coords was in the EU, where WAAS doesn't matter, so his opinion is not a valid data point in evaluating WAAS. 2)Are you determining that the cache hiders had bad coords because the cache's posted coords didn't match what your phone showed when you were at the cache's hiding place? 3) Your phone is not the gold standard. 1- did you read the thread ? as early on as reply #4 sums it up nicely, the last part of which i just about plagiarised, without realising it. 2) obviously that's the first clue a person would likely noticed, yes. smartphone, standalone, map, whatever, when the logs are compared and other people say they also had problems with cords, it's fairly obvious averaging and/or waas, or surveyors masts with $60,000 rigs probably were not used during placement. 3) lol, i didn't realize an old $40 smartphone intimidated the gold standards of cache placing ! please offer my apologies to the standards folks, we're just playing a game here. it would be awesome if they published what devices , averaging methods, and wether waas was employed , for those gold standards during cache placement. if it happened more often , even better. :-) if you happen to have one of those gold standard devices, please post cords updates/reminders to cache placers who obviously did not, it will make it a lot easier for my old smartphone to get me closer. :-)

if he likes yours, let him use it. ten years is responsible enough to know better than to throw it against rocks. we routinely hand our phones to 7-10 year olds without issue. they love to hear the proximately beeps as we encounter another cache along the trail, and the grass times they tripped and fell into creeks the (rugged baby!) phones were of course just fine. usually takes more time to wipe the tears away than it does the mud from the screen. ... but you asked about one for him. the Casio c811 ($30), Samsung rugby pro ($45), nomu s10 ($150) are all pretty tough, and you can install the simplest of, or very complicated/feature packed applications he prefers. no wires to carry, no cellular service needed (ever) just wifi in more caches (you can share caches between your phone and his very easily also) and go. it's extremely helpful to have the passenger watch the screen as you're nearing your destination, from my experience. they learn about napping and directions of road along the way also.

to find at least twenty, maybe log at least four. i know, it's a lofty goal, but I'm that kind of over achiever.

Did you read the 1st post? The individual is at a school so I would expect that the etrex GPS can be handed to students in a classroom or outside. Every post doesn't need to be "my smartphone is better then your GPS". hi there ! thanks for the guidance, but i got this !