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re: using a cell phone as a gps receiver


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Using a cellphone instead of dedicated GPS receiver sucks (pardon my French). I had to do maintenance on my cache  " The Star Ship USS Jack Fletcher GCKEGQ". And I didn't have a GPS receiver.  I fell out of doing Geocaching other then maintaining my 3 caches that are still operating. It was a long time since I last visited this cache (I new generally were it was).  The graphic compass and the direction line was barley viable in the sunlight on my phone and I also couldn't make the graphic compass large enough on the screen to be useful when the sun ducked behind a cloud. The 1 thing on the display that I could see clearly was the distance to target indicator. So I used a trick that I learned from searching for ELT'S (Emergency locator transmitter). The ELT goes off if the plane crashes or makes a relay hard landing. I used what is called a boxing search using the  distance to target indicator. There is always a way around a problem if you think about it hard enough, and don't get frustrated.

 

Steve

 

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You might want to try a different caching app; there are a number of officially approved ones from 3rd parties.  The one I use has a nice, big, full-screen compass arrow, and even shows the sun position on the rose.  Sometimes, after seeing that, it's as simple as following your shadow to the cache.

Screen readability in sunlight isn't as good as the best GPS units I'll admit, but if you turn brightness to Auto and turn around so the unit is in your shadow, I find it's fine.

I"m never going back to a dedicated GPS unit.

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I own a GPSr, but I absolutely hate using it.  It's a Garmin, but the interface is terrible, the software and link with the computer is completely unreliable, and the maps are lousy.  Maybe I've been spoiled by the ease of smartphone UIs, but I can't stand GPSr devices (and I've tried using a few different ones).  My smartphone is pretty darn reliable and accurate, so the only reason I bother keeping my Garmin is for wet weather caching.

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Yes all of these reports very much depend on the manufacturer of the device - both smartphones and dedicated GPS devices, and maker of the apps for phones. There are good and bad for each, and a wide variety of user experiences that some may love and some may hate.

Take every "review" with a grain of salt, especially if the individual lumps ALL phones or ALL GPSrs in one lump category, good or bad.

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Well the Alcatel Fierce 4 cell phone that I have isn't best on the market. The biggest part of that is I can't afford the higher price phones. And don't prescribe to keeping up with the Jones bit. I hung on to 1 phone for 5 years.  There is so many geocache app's on Google play. I don't know which is best. It is the same as for other app's. Like I was looking for a simple app to read/write to rtf files.  I got so many app's dumped on me, it felt like a Texas super cell opened on me. They all say that they have the best prog, the easiest controls, easier to see in the sun light and so on. I find, at lease the last time I used a dedicated GPS receiver, that the dedicated GPS receiver works better then a multipurpose device like a cell phone for Geocaching.

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10 hours ago, steve kc7byp said:

I hung on to 1 phone for 5 years.

Impressive. My wife and I have used pre-paid dumb-phones for about that long. Then our provider sent us new ones because the technology used by the old ones was being phased out in our area (e.g., 2G to 3G). But with smartphones, I find that after 2 years, I start running into apps that I can't install because my phone's version of the OS is no longer supported. My current smartphone is almost 3 years old, and I'm starting to think about replacing it for that reason. (The cracked screen I can live with, but I need those apps! ;) )

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3 hours ago, niraD said:

Impressive. My wife and I have used pre-paid dumb-phones for about that long. Then our provider sent us new ones because the technology used by the old ones was being phased out in our area (e.g., 2G to 3G). But with smartphones, I find that after 2 years, I start running into apps that I can't install because my phone's version of the OS is no longer supported. My current smartphone is almost 3 years old, and I'm starting to think about replacing it for that reason. (The cracked screen I can live with, but I need those apps! ;) )

A cracked screen would drive me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY.  I always have a tempered glass screen protector on mine and when those even get a little cracked, I immediately replace it.  I don't always go for the fanciest/latest-and-greatest...but I like to have a more powerful device, so I find a good deal on a higher end smartphone usually.  Right now I have an LG G6, which is a year old and I'll probably keep it at least until the end of the year...maybe through next spring.  It's a solid performer, is water resistant and MIL STD rated for shock and dust resistance (not really "rugged", but able to handle drops better than the fancy-schmancy Samsung and Apple devices). I average about 20 to 25 months per phone.

Edited by J Grouchy
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On 4/9/2018 at 9:43 AM, J Grouchy said:

I own a GPSr, but I absolutely hate using it.  It's a Garmin, but the interface is terrible, the software and link with the computer is completely unreliable, and the maps are lousy.  Maybe I've been spoiled by the ease of smartphone UIs, but I can't stand GPSr devices (and I've tried using a few different ones).  My smartphone is pretty darn reliable and accurate, so the only reason I bother keeping my Garmin is for wet weather caching.

Absolutely. The interfaces on my 'droid caching apps are fine and they are convenient to use, but the GPS in a $200 phone is, let us say, not necessarily the best. My $400 Garmin GPS is rock solid even in overcast skies and even in the rain but the interface looks like it was written in the 1990s and it is just about unusable, other than as a straight up show-me-the-current-coordinates GPS.

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2 hours ago, The Snowdog said:

the GPS in a $200 phone is, let us say, not necessarily the best.

Not necessarily the worst either.

My $150 phone has excellent GPS innards.  I can't tell any difference in accuracy vs my old Garmin.

It seems all phones nowadays use the same commodity GPS chips, and they're all good for this game.  Older phones, maybe not so much.  Older phones got a bad reputation, and may have earned it.

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43 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

My $150 phone has excellent GPS innards.  I can't tell any difference in accuracy vs my old Garmin.

It seems all phones nowadays use the same commodity GPS chips, and they're all good for this game.  Older phones, maybe not so much.  Older phones got a bad reputation, and may have earned it.

This. GPS chips are fairly ubiquitous now. It's more the CPU and smartphone capability to calculate and fast that make a difference. And maybe its structure in affecting the antenna reception.

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Some years ago I read that the difference between smartphone gps and handheld was largely in the antenna.   GPS unit dedicating enough (more) space and weight to it than the smartphone, which is packing in 47 functions.

I have no idea if that's still true, and it may well be brand/model specific, but it *seems* true to me. I'm caching more from phone, but under tree cover my Garmin handheld is far better than my phone. (I left the gps at home recently, and used the phone in trees and in ravines. The day reminded me of 2003, when 45-60ft of accuracy was considered okay. )

And getting decent coords involves some user understanding of their device,  whatever it is. That hasn't changed. Just recently a thread where phone user was wondering about getting good coords, and turned out he was using a Degrees Minutes Seconds app with NO decimal seconds. That's even worse than the very old hides from owners of gps units that only had 2 decimal places after the minutes. (Those were an adventure to hunt).

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Phones also have assisted GPS (A-GPS) which uses the network in triangulation and obtaining previous satellite data stored on servers. The "lock-in" can be significantly faster and reduce the bouncing signal dedicated GPS units get around tall buildings or cloud cover. I have found phone GPS readings better than a GPSr.

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AGPS isn't as accurate as a satellite signal, but smartphones using it do gain a locking speed advantage. The cell triangulation happens right away if there's a signal, rather that waiting for a satellite lock, which starts the device off in a much smaller area.  A device with only a-gps won't be as accurate as a gps device (earliest smartphones began with a-gps, and gained a bit of a bad reputation for accuracy).  But yeah, now it's a matter of the physical antenna reception (most smartphones today are plenty sufficient for geocaching), and cpu power for crunching those numbers speedily.

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10 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

and cpu power for crunching those numbers speedily.

Wouldn't the GPS chip handle the number crunching separately from the phone's main CPU?  Though in this day of 8-core phone CPUs, it almost feels we should be finding something for all those cores to actually do.

I've always assumed a GPS chipset adds maybe $2 to the cost of a phone (wild guess), because otherwise a $100 retail phone wouldn't include it.  It's mind-bending to think of how much function and performance you get for so little money.  We live in great times.

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On 4/29/2018 at 7:16 AM, Isonzo Karst said:

Some years ago I read that the difference between smartphone gps and handheld was largely in the antenna...

I believe that's the problem with my aforementioned $200 smartphone. My GPS will be all over the place, while my caching friend's cheap Walmart burner phone GPS is solid. I'm sure they have the same basic GPS chip. I do like the convenience of that smartphone (I use c:geo, for what it's worth) but I keep the Garmin handy just in case.

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3 hours ago, gesharp said:

 I am just now back into geocaching after a several year long hiatus.

 - snip -

I'm so glad to see others are using their phones now, too.  It used to be frowned upon.  :blink:

 

I don't remember that.  Have any links to refer to?  Thanks.    :)

I do remember that several years ago many phone users had issues, but the other 2/3rds used a phone to cache since '05.

 

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