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Phone for identifying local geacaches - will still use GPS


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We have a Garmin Oregon with full Ordnance Survey maps and love it for caching. However, Mrs BL's phone needs replacing so we were thinking of getting one that we can use to identify local caches wherever we happen to be. Can anyone help please?

Ability to log finds on the spot and superior GPS accuracy are therefore not as important as ease of use for us technophobes!

 

We do not understand all the techy speak we have seen on the forums so please answer in plain English if possible with just names of things we should look for or avoid. :(

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We have a Garmin Oregon with full Ordnance Survey maps and love it for caching. However, Mrs BL's phone needs replacing so we were thinking of getting one that we can use to identify local caches wherever we happen to be. Can anyone help please?

Ability to log finds on the spot and superior GPS accuracy are therefore not as important as ease of use for us technophobes!

 

We do not understand all the techy speak we have seen on the forums so please answer in plain English if possible with just names of things we should look for or avoid. :antenna:

HI I am in nottingham and have just solved this very problem!

lots of phones have gps but it is not very accurate. I tried the Iphone 4 and it was around 80 feet out!

I have just got a HTC Wildfire it has a fantastic gps and the batery lasts 6 hours (and a spare is only £20)

I use c:geo down load app for free but ground speak also do one but theres is not quite as good.

people also use the htc desire but they complain the battery will not last that long.

 

the wildfire is £129 at argos if they have any in or £180 at tescos with £20 free credit.

have a look at post New Kid on the block HTC Wildfire

 

Like I said I am an engineer and wanted to find caches anywhere without pre planing and a phone is the answer but its taken a while to find one with a brilliant gps and a battery that lasts.

hope this helps.

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

good luck and happy caching

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I use my iPhone with the Geocaching.com app and couldnt ask for a better combination. I have tried the "droid" phones (DroidX) and wasnt as happy with it for a geocaching alternative.

 

Hi I presume you are in america or canada?

The Iphone app is great but it would be nice if tied it in to the sat nav for driving directions.

 

The big problem with the Iphone is the gps is not very accurate in England, I dont know why because the Ipad is good to 2m and the ip4 is surposed to use the same electrinics?

 

so Iphone 4 in england no!

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Thanks for all the replies gys.

 

Funnily enough we had just been looking at deals on the HTC Wildfire as Mr BL has a HTC which unfortunately does not have GPS functionality. Never heard of the c.geo app - will google it.

 

The cmments on the i-phone's accuracy were interesting and may explain some of the logs I have seen on my caches from iphone users. In fact some logs from phone cachers were making us wonder whether any phones were acurate on the GPS so its great to hear there is good news on a phone that we have seen some great contract deals on - £11.67 a month using a cash back deal (so you have to be organised) including 600 mins calls and unlimited internet.

 

Cheers

BLB

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Thanks for all the replies gys.

 

Funnily enough we had just been looking at deals on the HTC Wildfire as Mr BL has a HTC which unfortunately does not have GPS functionality. Never heard of the c.geo app - will google it.

 

The cmments on the i-phone's accuracy were interesting and may explain some of the logs I have seen on my caches from iphone users. In fact some logs from phone cachers were making us wonder whether any phones were acurate on the GPS so its great to hear there is good news on a phone that we have seen some great contract deals on - £11.67 a month using a cash back deal (so you have to be organised) including 600 mins calls and unlimited internet.

 

Cheers

BLB

glad we could help.

as of c:geo just click on market place and it is in there for free.

 

I would also suggest that you get Rmaps

when you use c:geo and you want to display a cache on the map you get an option to "display on external map". if you have Rmaps installed it will give you a list of maps and out of that list the most useful one seems to be "mapnik" this shows roads and footpaths and river/streams which a lot don't and as you know a lot of caches are on footpaths

 

one last one I have is GPS status again another free download from the market place.

This will show all gps info can but quite intresting.

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Thanks for all the replies gys.

 

Funnily enough we had just been looking at deals on the HTC Wildfire as Mr BL has a HTC which unfortunately does not have GPS functionality. Never heard of the c.geo app - will google it.

 

The cmments on the i-phone's accuracy were interesting and may explain some of the logs I have seen on my caches from iphone users. In fact some logs from phone cachers were making us wonder whether any phones were acurate on the GPS so its great to hear there is good news on a phone that we have seen some great contract deals on - £11.67 a month using a cash back deal (so you have to be organised) including 600 mins calls and unlimited internet.

 

Cheers

BLB

glad we could help.

as of c:geo just click on market place and it is in there for free.

 

I would also suggest that you get Rmaps

when you use c:geo and you want to display a cache on the map you get an option to "display on external map". if you have Rmaps installed it will give you a list of maps and out of that list the most useful one seems to be "mapnik" this shows roads and footpaths and river/streams which a lot don't and as you know a lot of caches are on footpaths

 

one last one I have is GPS status again another free download from the market place.

This will show all gps info can but quite intresting.

 

P.S I should give credit to Gadgyt as he put in all the effort finding and testing the phone and apps

Thanks Gadgyt

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Thanks for all the replies gys.

 

Funnily enough we had just been looking at deals on the HTC Wildfire as Mr BL has a HTC which unfortunately does not have GPS functionality. Never heard of the c.geo app - will google it.

 

The cmments on the i-phone's accuracy were interesting and may explain some of the logs I have seen on my caches from iphone users. In fact some logs from phone cachers were making us wonder whether any phones were acurate on the GPS so its great to hear there is good news on a phone that we have seen some great contract deals on - £11.67 a month using a cash back deal (so you have to be organised) including 600 mins calls and unlimited internet.

 

Cheers

BLB

glad we could help.

as of c:geo just click on market place and it is in there for free.

 

I would also suggest that you get Rmaps

when you use c:geo and you want to display a cache on the map you get an option to "display on external map". if you have Rmaps installed it will give you a list of maps and out of that list the most useful one seems to be "mapnik" this shows roads and footpaths and river/streams which a lot don't and as you know a lot of caches are on footpaths

 

one last one I have is GPS status again another free download from the market place.

This will show all gps info can but quite intresting.

 

P.S I should give credit to Gadgyt as he put in all the effort finding and testing the phone and apps

Thanks Gadgyt

 

I forgot you want to load in radar as well use this when you are close to gz it is very accurate and easy to use

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If you go for an Android device (which I would strongly recommend), there are some caching apps that will allow you to use offline maps for those times when you have no signal or you don't want to rack up your data download for a particular reason.

 

On my SD card, I have mapnik offline maps (12 zoom levels) for UK, Ireland & Spain that I can access either from my preferred Geocaching tool (GeOrg) or via several free apps. These maps are based on OpenSourceMaps and have an excellent level of detail.

Edited by MaxiP
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On my SD card, I have mapnik offline maps (12 zoom levels) for UK, Ireland & Spain that I can access either from my preferred Geocaching tool (GeOrg) or via several free apps.

 

This sounds really useful, but I'm damned if I could find where to download a full set of UK mapping. Do you have a link?

 

Thanks in advance, Mike.

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Download the required tilepack (maps) from here --> http://wiki.andnav.org/index.php/List_Of_MapTilePacks

 

You can then use your preferred mapping / caching application to access these. Store the tilepack on the SD card in a folder and within that you will see sub-folders called 1,2,3,4,5, etc which are the zoom levels (the higher the number, the higher the zoom). For mapping, Maverick or gvSIG are both pretty good (both free); for caching, you need an app that can use offline maps. For this, GeOrg is my preferred app as it provides all the functionality I need and is streets ahead of c:geo or the GS app

 

Hope this helps.

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Download the required tilepack (maps) from here --> http://wiki.andnav.org/index.php/List_Of_MapTilePacks

 

You can then use your preferred mapping / caching application to access these. Store the tilepack on the SD card in a folder and within that you will see sub-folders called 1,2,3,4,5, etc which are the zoom levels (the higher the number, the higher the zoom). For mapping, Maverick or gvSIG are both pretty good (both free); for caching, you need an app that can use offline maps. For this, GeOrg is my preferred app as it provides all the functionality I need and is streets ahead of c:geo or the GS app

 

Hope this helps.

 

Excellent - thank you.

 

Unfortunately my phone throws a wobbler when I try to copy all these files on. The moral of this is - OP, I can't recommend the Samsung Galaxy Apollo!

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One of the things that would make it hard for me to switch from the iphone is geosphere. I have found nothing better for use with my handheld. It filters pqs, maps out the entire pq, and displays html beautifully. It is great for longer cache descriptions, pages where the graphic is important,and for identifying caches with special icons. It also works well with Navigon for voice directions, which I picked up on sale.

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I use my iPhone with the Geocaching.com app and couldnt ask for a better combination. I have tried the "droid" phones (DroidX) and wasnt as happy with it for a geocaching alternative.

 

Hi I presume you are in america or canada?

The Iphone app is great but it would be nice if tied it in to the sat nav for driving directions.

 

The big problem with the Iphone is the gps is not very accurate in England, I dont know why because the Ipad is good to 2m and the ip4 is surposed to use the same electrinics?

 

so Iphone 4 in england no!

The iPhone 4's antenna design (for all antennas, as far as I can tell) is best described as "epic fail".

 

I'm an RF engineer and so are a number of my coworkers - the moment we read about the issue and then saw the actual design we started laughing out loud.

 

Any device where the antenna is in a position that a person's hand will normally contact the antenna element is STUPID. It's understandable that on a phone-sized device you'll deal with some nasty blockage issues, but designing a device with bare antenna elements that are part of the casing if the device is 100% idiotic.

 

So yeah, I'm not surprised the iPhone 4 has poor GPS reception.

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