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any mobiles that Orange sell that are any good?


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I have been using my dads marine gps, NO idea what it is called but It cost about £800 and is VERY acurate. however I am heading of to Oz soon so want to get a mobile phone with good GPS so I can go paperless. I am currenlty with Orange and am happy with the telephone service so want a phone with good GPS pref that I can get off orange but if not I can get it unlocked (I understand if you unlock an I phone and add to another network you loose half of the options)

 

I know it is not going to be as good as what I am usning at home and I may buy a decent handheld whilst in Hong Kong enroute but would like to get a GPS phone 1st.

 

Any ideas of one that will not place me 50ft away?

 

Thanks

KAla

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I have been using my dads marine gps, NO idea what it is called but It cost about £800 and is VERY acurate. however I am heading of to Oz soon so want to get a mobile phone with good GPS so I can go paperless. I am currenlty with Orange and am happy with the telephone service so want a phone with good GPS pref that I can get off orange but if not I can get it unlocked (I understand if you unlock an I phone and add to another network you loose half of the options)

 

I know it is not going to be as good as what I am usning at home and I may buy a decent handheld whilst in Hong Kong enroute but would like to get a GPS phone 1st.

 

Any ideas of one that will not place me 50ft away?

 

Thanks

KAla

 

Any non-commercial civilian GPS with a modern chip is going to be as accurate as your Dad's (presumably also civilian) GPS - unless it also uses base stations (DGPS).

 

Unfortunately (or fortunately) most cache hiders don't have access to DGPS sets - so there is no advantage at all in using a GPS with an accuracy of, say, 1 meter, to find a cache - if the hiders GPS, and hence the listed co-ords, are only accurate to 10 meters.....

Edited by keehotee
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Ooooooooooooh......................

 

BE AWARE!!!!!!

 

If you intend using it abroad on any network, CHECK your package - you may find hunting for the odd cache turns out to be VERY expensive!!!!!!

 

I'm not toally au fait with caching using the N95 that I have, but I know it uses the t'interweb to do it, but I get free access in the UK.... it'd be VERY expensive abroad, I'm told...

 

I may be wrong of course, I'm sure someone will come along and tell you if I'm wrong!!

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Personally I'd get the upcoming HTC Hero that's going on Orange. It's using the same software as the T-Mobile G1 and the Vodafone Magix called Android. You can then download for free a software package from the Android Market called Geobeagle and then you'll have one v. competant caching phone.

 

I've got he T-Mobile G1 and managed over 100 caches, no problems, using the above Geobeagle software.

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Have a Samsung Omnia which I use as a back up to my PDA for caching plus I use it for finding out what is nearby and for logging some finds (I use GCzII 'free'). Wouldnt rely upon it entirely 'yet' for caching but as a general back up it is ok. I also run Memory Map on it.

I use the Omnia i910 with the surprisingly decent BasicGPS freeware. It easily holds a few hundred regional caches, and all 7000 odd Trig points and handles .loc or.gpx files en masse, and the voice command feature is very useful.

 

It also holds a hundred or so albums, so I've plenty of MP3s to quietly listen to as I explore.

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I have been on Orange pretty much since they existed, lol

 

My current phone is the HTC Touch Diamond, I find the gps is reasonably accurate, and I have found 60 caches with it so far, although were new and we also have my wifes blackberry. I use a brilliant free program which I can download all cache info via wifi and save them under various cities (currently have over 800 caches stored in memory)

 

Then when I go on the field I put my caching program in offline mode and away I go. So its completly data plan friendly, even if I go abroad I can find a wifi hotspot and use the program to search for the nearest caches from the current location.

 

Im very happy.

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I've been with Orange since January '96.

Just about any Series 60 Symbian phone is capable of geocaching with a Bluetooth GPS but by far the best has to be the N95. The larger screen makes it easier to see what's about and micro SD card (currently 32GB is largest available) gives you a great deal of storage for cache details, pictures etc.

 

Additionally there are a large number of GPS based applications available through Java's J2ME and Symbian's SIS formats.

 

The real time multitasking means you can listen to music while you're tracking down that elusive cache and hard buttons (not touch screen) allow you to use the phone whilst on the move.

 

The N95 8GB version is also available with a larger screen than the standard N95 but is not upgradable as the flash memory is stored internally rather than the micro SD, so think carefully if you opt for the 8GB version.

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We're using a HTC Touch Cruise for full paperless (Tom Tom, Memory Map and Geoscout 2). Can be away for weeks and keep totally up to date.

 

However, the GPS on most phones (including the Touch Cruise) do not use the SiRF Star III GPSr chipset, and it means the GPS is no where near as accurate as you might expect. You need to be moving at a reasonable pace for it to make any sene of location, and it just stops working inder tree cover.

 

Hence they work fine for Sat Nav, or Memory Map, but no where near as good as a SiRF Star III GPSr for homing in on a cache.

 

So, we use a £75 eTrex H for the final search, and more often than not it will put us within spitting distance, even under heavy tree cover.

 

You can get there with the phone, and we have done a couple that way, but it is a much more painful experience.

 

If you enter "sid and bob pda update" into google and hit the fisrt link, you'll find a site which will prove some good feedback on one Geocacher's experiences of PDA and how they use it.

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