Iphone 4 with no signal- can I geocache?

[Annachoc1]

I am new to Geocaching and am hoping to have an initial go this weekend. I am travelling to a part of Devon where I know I will really struggle with phone reception on my Iphone 4. I will have access to wifi in where I am staying, but not when I am out and about.

 

Is it still possible to use my Iphone as a Geocaching tool with no reception- if so can anyone give me an idiots guide as to how to do this?

 

I have downloaded the geocaching app onto my Iphone and I have signed up to the Geocaching website with basic membership (but can upgrade to premium if it helps- I'm not quite sure what the benefits are as yet).

 

Apologies for asking for so much information- I won't be in a great postition to try to figure this out as I go along as my 5 year old son is in the mood for adventure rather than sitting still while I fiddle with confusing technology......

[+Lieblweb]

There's only a few times where I've tried to geocache with the phone with no reception - and it WAS NOT fun. It's S L O W to do anything and locks up. You might be able to go into your General settings, Network, and turn OFF your cellular data. This might prevent the phone from constantly searching for a signal (and prevent lock ups). ??? I tried a bunch of things last summer and it just didn't work for me. I haven't tried any of that since newer software came out.

 

With that being said.... If you do not have cell service, you can't "Find nearbye geocaches" because this requires access to the internet.

 

Somehow, you need to get geocaches into your phone ahead of time. Without a premium membership, you can't run Pocket Queries. I have a premium membership so its hard for me to know what you can or can't do. But at your hotel room with WIFI (I've never done this), you should be able to browse geocaches using a laptop. Hook up your phone to the laptop and go directly to a geocache webpage and hit "SEND to my phone"

 

That's just a wild guess...minus other details. Assuming your phone is already setup to your laptop, etc etc etc

Edited April 2, 2012 by Lieblweb

[+terrkan78]

I recently downgraded from smart phone to dumb phone, but I used to geocache outside cell service all the time with my iPhone 3G without using pocket queries. You just have to save the caches to the phone before leaving cell service.

 

It's probably faster to do it with a pocket query (I never tried a pocket query on the phone), but this is how I did it:

1. Find a cool-sounding cache on the computer. Note the GC number.

2. Look up the GC number on my phone (main screen).

3. Hit the "save" button (approx middle of the page). This will take you to another page where you can save the cache to a particular group - I had set up groups for various locations around me).

4. When you're ready to go hunt that cache, outside cell service, you just hit the "saved caches" tab at the bottom (or at least I think it was called "saved caches" - something like that). The only drawback was I could never get the sat map to zoom in very close outside cell service, even if I did save the map along with the cache.

 

As long as I was truly outside cell service, I didn't have any problems with the app locking up. It's when I was on the fringes of cell service that it would get mad.

[+The A-Team]

I won't be in a great postition to try to figure this out as I go along as my 5 year old son is in the mood for adventure rather than sitting still while I fiddle with confusing technology......

It would probably be a good idea if you tried it out on your own with some caches in your area before you try it out with your 5 year old. Find a cache near home, load it as per terrkan78's instructions, turn off your cell phone data, and try to find it. Like you said, you don't want to be trying to figure it all out while your 5 year old gets increasingly bored.

[+Team Pixos]

Save the caches you intend to find for use offline. Then just use them from that location. Works for me

[+macatac1961]

Save the caches you intend to find for use offline. Then just use them from that location. Works for me

There's a whole section of this forum dedicated to the iPhone with lots of info.

[+Fryguy1111]

I use a Blackberry Torch, but my geocaching app,CacheSense,has the ability to download multiple PQ's to my phone. So when I'm out hiking in an area without cell service, I have CacheSense use previously downloaded PQ's rather than a direct cell connection to geocaching.com. I'm betting that most iPhone apps have a similar feature.

[+Wreck Diver]

I often use my iPhone for Geocaching while traveling and with data billed at $19.97 a megabyte anywhere outside the continental United States, I will generally turn data roaming off once I have reached my travel destination.

 

The solution I have found for iPhone caching without data or wifi is to save the geocaches to the phone beforehand using pocket queries.

 

Without a premium membership, you can still save the individual caches you are seeking to a Saved List in the app and then save the cache information in the list so that you can navigate without using data or wifi.