Advice on HTC (or windows mobile)

[+iCARUSmith]

Ok, here's one that probably has been asked before. I'm currently on an E50 which seems pretty good especially with smartGPX but I was wanting to upgrade to a windows mobile phone as I have memory map. This, I think, narrows it down to an HTC.

 

Has anyone had much experience of any HTC models? What are they like for battery life and positioning. The E50 even compared to my dad's garmin seems pretty good.

 

Any advice would be appreciated, Thanks

[+Amberel]

Ok, here's one that probably has been asked before. I'm currently on an E50 which seems pretty good especially with smartGPX but I was wanting to upgrade to a windows mobile phone as I have memory map. This, I think, narrows it down to an HTC.

 

Has anyone had much experience of any HTC models? What are they like for battery life and positioning. The E50 even compared to my dad's garmin seems pretty good.

 

Any advice would be appreciated, Thanks

There are several WM PDA/phones with a GPSr. As you have realised, HTC make a considerable range, and they also make (or, at least, design) them for others, such as Sony. The problem with HTC designs is that, apart from the very first O2 XDA Orbit, they all have QualComm chipsets. These are acceptable (just about) for SatNav. For geocaching they are VERY poor indeed. I have 4 different models of these units and they are all equally bad, though to be fair none of them are the latest models as I no longer consider anything with a QualComm chipset to be worth looking at.

 

I also have an Asus P750 and an Acer X960. Both of these have SiRF III chipsets. Neither is perfect - indeed, I think there is no perfect device on the market.

 

The Asus is a reliable workhorse. The screen is a bit on the small side but it does have physical phone keypad. The GPS performance is good but not exceptional (if an eTrex Vista HCx performance is 10, then the Asus performance would be 8), though as delivered the chipset was configured with the static navigation filter enabled and the moving average filter disabled - these need to be reversed, which can be done but would be the subject of a separate message. The processor is responsive, and it has the most outstanding battery performance of any I've tried - over 10 hours running MemoryMap continuously, plus occasional phone and email.

 

The Acer is a flashy job by comparison. A 640x320 screen gives very fine images, though the icons in MemoryMap are a bit small. The GPS is quite fantastic. Incredibly quick time to first fix, remarkable accuracy and it hangs on in woods, etc. extremely well. On the eTrex scale, it scores 12, i.e. it is BETTER than the eTrex Vista HCx. Battery life is OK, though not so good as the Asus - I'd guess 7 hours of MemoryMap. It has a really atrocious short, flimsy, telescopic stylus, but fortunately a fingernail works as well for most things. But it's unreliable. It locks up occasionally in any number of different programs, requiring a reboot or even for the battery to be lifted out briefly. The link between MemoryMap and CacheMate sometimes stops working, requiring that they be closed down and restarted. MobiPocket seems to keep reverting to the library instead of staying reading the eBook. After my initial euphoria wth the fabulous GPSr performance I've just reverted to using the Asus.

 

Both units, of course, take 16GB uSD cards, but I've now filled them up and am looking for 32Gb!

 

Rgds, Andy

[+Amberel]

Oh, and an addendum to this, the Asus is a bit short on RAM. Not a terminal problem, but I tend not to keep a dozen apps open all at the same time as I would on other PDAs. And it stops MemoryMap loading a full tile of the 50000 maps. All the 25000 tiles are much smaller and there is no problem, and you can easily split the 50000 so you only download part of it to the PDA.

 

I really wish I could combine the best points of the Asus and the Acer, then I really would be close to my "perfect" GPSr/PDA/phone .

 

Rgds, Andy

[+Sadgit1971]

I have a htc tytn II and the internal GPS is crap, so I use a Holux 1000 connected via Bluetooth and it works like a dream. Battery life is ok and was caching for 6 hours during a 11 mile walk and the battery hadn't ran out. This was while Memory Map was running the whole time. I carry a spare battery just in case, but hasn't been needed yet.

 

to extend the battery life I have the back light on about 50%

 

Cheers

Mark

[Nediam]

I've got a HTC TYTN II and have had it for quite a while. The GPSr with Memory-Map works ok so long as your moving at a reasonable pace. If you stop and then start moving slowly to narrow down the search area, the GPSr can't keep up. But I find that if I use the direction arrow on Memory-Map and walk to within an indicated 20feet of the cache - then it's not a million miles off

 

I had similar problems with the old CF card GPSr in my PDA but the new one works fine

 

I bought the TYTN as a "back up" should anything happen to my PDA whilst out caching and also as an "all-in-one" device that I could carry around all the time and use for a spot of casual caching as and when I got a chance. It works great for this and I'd recomend it to anyone as a secondary GPSr unit.

 

As regards battery life - With Memory-Map and the GPSr running - it's short, very short - a couple or three hours tops.

 

Don't know if there are any other devices out there at the moment that can use Memory-Map and have a better built in. But I'd be interested in hearing about them for when my contract is up....

Edited August 6, 2009 by Nediam

[+Sadgit1971]

 

As regards battery life - With Memory-Map and the GPSr running - it's short, very short - a couple or three hours tops.

 

 

100% agree with this statement. Hence I bought the holux to pair with it and the battery life is now far greater

[+daddykeeper]

Just done our first, with an htc something-or-other branded as Orange SPV M700.

 

Been using it for years with MM for greenlaning in the 4x4, tomtom to get us along the main roads, and now got us straight to our first cache. Keeping it charged in the car has meant never any trouble for us, rather than the GPS I find the backlight is what kills the battery (unless using it as a modem/phone, then expect no battery life at all)

[Wildie]

hi we just got our selfs the htc touch g3 and installed basic gps and found our first 2 caches with it it was bang on down to 3 feet unlike our older garmin gps which gave us 10mtrs, still trying out other software with it but so far so good only got it due to the free orange gps maps deal.