Where are the smartphone applications for geocaching?

[+Train_Man]

I don't understand why I've spent hours looking for a basic geocaching application for my windows mobile 5.0 SMARTPHONE and haven't found one yet. There are tons for pocket pc, but nobody seems to develop them for smartphone. All i'm looking for is a basic map with cache info.

 

If anyone could help out with this, it'd be great!

[+comphelp]

My phone is a Pocket PC so I can't help sorry.

 

I suspect that its got to do with the Windows Mobile Smartphones having a very small market share in comparison to Windows Mobile Pocket PC's & (both PDA's and phones).

 

Perhaps there's a market for Smartphone Geocaching apps. Any software developers out there?

[+Train_Man]

My phone is a Pocket PC so I can't help sorry.

 

I suspect that its got to do with the Windows Mobile Smartphones having a very small market share in comparison to Windows Mobile Pocket PC's & (both PDA's and phones).

 

Perhaps there's a market for Smartphone Geocaching apps. Any software developers out there?

 

I'd certainly spend $10-20 on a good quality mapping application for my tmobile dash smartphone.

[+greenjuice]

My phone is a Pocket PC so I can't help sorry.

 

I suspect that its got to do with the Windows Mobile Smartphones having a very small market share in comparison to Windows Mobile Pocket PC's & (both PDA's and phones).

 

Perhaps there's a market for Smartphone Geocaching apps. Any software developers out there?

 

I'd certainly spend $10-20 on a good quality mapping application for my tmobile dash smartphone.

 

There is one alternative you can do: If you have GSAK, then you can export a certain PQ to HTML. GSAK creates a directory with HTML-files. Search the index-file within the directory and open it, then a web browser is opened and you have a nice "website" where you can choose any caches in the list. My cellphone is a smartphone with Symbian OS and I use Opera Mini to open HTML-created PQ. That's it!

[+Train_Man]

My phone is a Pocket PC so I can't help sorry.

 

I suspect that its got to do with the Windows Mobile Smartphones having a very small market share in comparison to Windows Mobile Pocket PC's & (both PDA's and phones).

 

Perhaps there's a market for Smartphone Geocaching apps. Any software developers out there?

 

I'd certainly spend $10-20 on a good quality mapping application for my tmobile dash smartphone.

 

There is one alternative you can do: If you have GSAK, then you can export a certain PQ to HTML. GSAK creates a directory with HTML-files. Search the index-file within the directory and open it, then a web browser is opened and you have a nice "website" where you can choose any caches in the list. My cellphone is a smartphone with Symbian OS and I use Opera Mini to open HTML-created PQ. That's it!

I thought of that but it doesn't have maps and it's a pain to scroll down to one because my phone doesn't support searching for some reason. Thanks for the idea! I'm going to be getting a palm so i'll interface it to my gps and use that.

[+Eagle6990]

I would pay a bit for a program to read GPX files from my Cingular 3125 smartphone and I would pay more to be able to use my Bluetooth GPS with my phone for navigation to the caches.

[+Tigerz]

We've been using a Motorola Q smartphone for about a year now. During that time, we've come across one application that will allow us to half-way effectively read a cache page on our phone. It's a "proof-of-concept" design from GpxSonar. You can download a copy here.

 

There are a couple of idiosyncrasies, but it generally works fine. To begin, your GPX file must be sorted alphabetically so you can move reasonably from cache to cache. A PQ directly from geocaching.com would require you to scroll through all of the randomly arranged caches until you find the one you want ... a hassle and quite time consuming for a lot of waypoints. This means loading the downloaded PQ in to GSAK and then exporting the alphabetical sort to the phone. That's not all bad as we like to add user notes, more than the typical last 5 logs, etc. The other challenge we've faced is the size of the GPX file itself. If you try to load more than say 500 waypoints, the application will lock up trying to load and/or move between geocaches.

 

It's not perfect, but it's the best we've found so far. We'd appreciate hearing from others ...

[+lofty17]

I currently use CacheMate from http://www.smittyware.com/ on my Samsung i730 smartphone running WM5. Oops, the 730i is a Pocket PC Phone, not a smart phone. Sorry about the misinformation.

 

It accepts .gpx files, and I've downloaded several cache databases to it from pocket queries via GSAK filtering.

 

It probably doesn't have everything you're looking for, but give it a try. They have a free trial version you can play with, and the full version is only $8.00.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Larry

Edited May 2, 2007 by lofty17

[robertlipe]

We've been using a Motorola Q smartphone for about a year now.

New Q user here that decided that adapting my homebrew plucker-based scheme for mobile IE was easier than anything I'd found.

your GPX file must be sorted alphabetically so you can move reasonably from cache to cache.

Eww. Alpha by name or by GC#? GPSBabel can help with that.

[+Tigerz]

We've been using a Motorola Q smartphone for about a year now.

New Q user here that decided that adapting my homebrew plucker-based scheme for mobile IE was easier than anything I'd found.

 

Music to our ears! I checked your website Robert and saw nothing when I did a search on both smartphone and the Motorola Q. I appreciate you likely don't have anything for public consumption, but I will be glad to help you beta test.

 

your GPX file must be sorted alphabetically so you can move reasonably from cache to cache.

Eww. Alpha by name or by GC#? GPSBabel can help with that.

 

It's alphabetical by cache name ...

[+scottru]

I would pay a bit for a program to read GPX files from my Cingular 3125 smartphone and I would pay more to be able to use my Bluetooth GPS with my phone for navigation to the caches.

 

Same here - I wish I had time to work on it myself. I paid for Spot, that piece of crap on the Blackberry, I'd certainly pay for something that actually worked.

 

FWIW, I have put together a very hacky "solution" - focusing more on the cache-finding problem than the looking-up-coordinates problem:

 

1) Get the coordinates for a cache (from wap.geocaching.com, or your pocket, or wherever).

2) Start Google Maps on the Smartphone (not the website - www.google.com/gmm)

3) Go to "find location" and enter the coordinates in the form N40 32.333 W122 22.234 (or decimal coords)

4) Poof, it shows up on the map.

 

The big problem is that you don't get much more granularity than you get for google maps online, so it really only works if you have better hints. The satellite view zooms a few more levels but is still not all that useful.

[+Eldavar]

oops... nevermind I found it already...

Edited December 20, 2008 by Eldavar

[+Maeglin]

I currently use CacheMate from http://www.smittyware.com/ on my Samsung i730 smartphone running WM5. Oops, the 730i is a Pocket PC Phone, not a smart phone. Sorry about the misinformation.

It exists these days for Windows Smartphone devices as well.