Using Cell Phone As Your GPS

[d1h]

Do a lot of you use your cell phone as a GPS? I know that using the GPS on your phone runs your battery down faster so generally you need to have it plugged into power at all times. Just wondering if this is hard on your cell phone battery since your battery is constantly charging and screen is lit up at all times. Second question for those of you that have iPhones. Do you prefer Apple maps or google maps.

[drsteve]

Lantley wrote:

drsteve wrote:

K Charles wrote:
If I use my phone for a GPS the screen will turn off and the Google lady will still tell me when to turn.

Beware the Google Lady. She has led us into some rather odd places, especially if she thinks there's a tenth of a mile to be saved.

That is my problem with Google, sometimes in an effort to find a shorter route, I get led down a questionable road.
TYpically not a big deal until you're towing a 40', 5'er

Last summer DW and I were camping in a state park on Lake Michigan, and we decided to go explore the adjacent National Forest. We went looking for a NPS campground, and the Google Lady had us leave the paved road and go down a dirt road... that got narrower and narrower... then became a two track... then became a sandy ORV trail. I was lucky to find a place to turn around.

Had we stayed on the paved road the campground was only a couple miles away...

[Lantley]

drsteve wrote:

K Charles wrote:
If I use my phone for a GPS the screen will turn off and the Google lady will still tell me when to turn.

Beware the Google Lady. She has led us into some rather odd places, especially if she thinks there's a tenth of a mile to be saved.

That is my problem with Google, sometimes in an effort to find a shorter route, I get led down a questionable road.
TYpically not a big deal until you're towing a 40', 5'er

[GordonThree]

wa8yxm wrote:

GordonThree wrote:
I try not to leave my phone plugged in "all the time" - this is the #1 killer of cell phones. Doesn't matter how smart the phone, battery, charger, etc is, charging it all the time shortens the batteries life. Charging it to 100% drastically shortens the life. But that's a different subject.

Document? Where did you hear that? From all I understand. NOT TRUE.

Easy to find on Google. Micro-cycling is one side affect, and other is driving "whiskers" deeper into the electrode structures, making them less likely to dissolve in future recharge cycles.

[Matt_Colie]

I have found that we need a mix to be effective. The thing a smartphone is great at is with that and Gasbuddy, you can reduce the effort of travel greatly - as long as you are in an area where coverage is good. We tried to go with just a smartphone (Android), but that not great for planning because of the screen size and limited information. We are also not "Blue Roads" people. This caused us to frequently be off the edge of the map data. Even if you pre-load the map data for where you think you will be, this does not always work as planned.

On the bridge of out coach, we have a standalone up to date GPS with the most recent updates. That gets loaded with the day's plan before we even get underway. This one has the traffic service, and it is pretty good, but not great. It does have the advantage of never driving off the edge of the world.

The standalone is a Garmin and routing they provide is way less than ideal for us. Google maps is even worse. Street Atlas that is running on the navigator's laptop is far the best for this because you can see the entire route in detail as soon as it plots. The big problem there is that the chart data is now five years out of date and there is no update available. The smartphone is also being an access point when needed, but even with a high repeater and a high mounted antenna we frequently totally out of bars.

I have been trying to change routing to Furkot for planning and as it is an online thing, trying to use it for navigation underway is at best problematic. I have also have no success getting either it or Google maps to read from a USB GPS realtime.

The loss of SA and the tables of waypoints (POI) is a vast inconvenience. I marvel that the technology has gotten so far along that I often have to go back to my paper charts. I am distressed that Garmin killed it without a replacement. And no, the Garmin computer apps are terrible and problematic at best.

Matt

[wa8yxm]

GordonThree wrote:
I try not to leave my phone plugged in "all the time" - this is the #1 killer of cell phones. Doesn't matter how smart the phone, battery, charger, etc is, charging it all the time shortens the batteries life. Charging it to 100% drastically shortens the life. But that's a different subject.

Document? Where did you hear that? From all I understand. NOT TRUE.

[Sam_Spade]

EV2 wrote:
When no cell service the phone has no internal data available.

Yes it does. It has the last "chunk" of map that it downloaded.
It is NOT constantly using the cell network to plot your progress.

[Sam_Spade]

ScottG wrote:
You may find yourself where there is no cell coverage but there's always GPS satelite coverage.

The phone actually HAS a GPS chip in it and is not dependent on cell service for most of it's operation.

It only needs the cell network to download a new section of map every so often......since it doesn't store the whole map internally like a "real" GPS does.

[drsteve]

K Charles wrote:
If I use my phone for a GPS the screen will turn off and the Google lady will still tell me when to turn.

Beware the Google Lady. She has led us into some rather odd places, especially if she thinks there's a tenth of a mile to be saved.

[Tom_Barb]

GPS service on the cell, requires a lot of data, be certain you data package can handle it.

[EV2]

When no cell service the phone has no internal data available. (NAVIGON app was the exception with download of all states available, but has been discontinued.) Dedicated GPS has all of the map data internal but must be updated from time to time. It works all the time and does not require a cell signal.

As to the phone, google maps was significantly superior to Apple maps, but recently has improved ten fold and is now pretty much an equal, and occasionally better than google maps.

Having both dedicated gps and phone maps is ideal.

[AsheGuy]

I have both a Garmin GPS (at least my 4th Garmin) and Android phone with Google Maps. The only place the GPS has an advantage is when there is no cell signal (and Google Maps tries to prevent that problem by loading maps ahead). With Verizon cell service, I seldom encounter a situation where Google Maps can't navigate. With cell coverage ever improving and Google Maps constantly improving, it only gets better.

My main issue with the GPS is the user interface. I can find a destination almost instantly on the phone, with the GPS it is usually a frustrating experience. Google Maps quickly fills in what you are trying to find while the GPS keeps telling you it can't find that location, place, etc. I use the GPS mainly as my speedometer as my RV is off 3-4 miles/hr. If it weren't for that, I would not use it at all except in emergency cell gaps. And Google Maps recently added speed limits.

Google maps (since it knows all about what everyone is doing 🙂 ) has saved me quite a few times from traffic accidents or just heavy congestion and it turns the route yellow and red to indicate congested areas. Just recently it routed me around an accident on an Interstate highway without me doing anything but giving permission to alter the route. I quit even connecting my Garmin cable for traffic data because it seldom helped.

Anyway, I certainly would not buy stock in a GPS company.

[wildtoad]

If going on a long RV trip I’ll use the Garmin as it has info about the size of the RV. In my car I use my IPhone and Apple Maps. Works well. I don’t use anything Google except for gmail as a backup.

[Lantley]

Local trips the phone GPS is fine. But for longer multi state trips towing the RV I prefer the stand alone GPS. I have a Garmin 760 RV LMT it is designed for RV use. It's not perfect but when towing the RV it does a better all around job than my phone.
The stand alone keeps me on main roads. Google maps will take me down the smallest street is can find. Google map will also take a short cut down a small rd. The Garmin keeps me on the bigger roads.
I don't mind Google Maps on my phone for daily or local use , but while towing the stand alone keeps me on the better path.
Never trust any GPS 100% always verify via paper map or 2nd source.

[srt20]

GordonThree wrote:
I try not to leave my phone plugged in "all the time" - this is the #1 killer of cell phones. Doesn't matter how smart the phone, battery, charger, etc is, charging it all the time shortens the batteries life. Charging it to 100% drastically shortens the life. But that's a different subject.

I use a stand alone GPS as my always on GPS, but I use my phone to navigate to "places". The phone has a much larger and up to date database of places. So I want to find an oil change, or a certain restaurant, or whatever, I ask Google for directions. My phone is fairly new and can run the screen for hours before the battery becomes an issue, so if I need to see the map, I just leave it on. Most of the time the turn by turn audio prompts are enough.

When I drive from one city to another, across 100s of miles, I use the stand alone GPS.

The stand alone gps has a battery in it too, but I don't care about that battery. the stand alone gps is usually turned on when a trip starts and left on until the trip ends.

just my opinions

This whole first paragraph is not correct.
The best thing for your battery is to plugged in at 100%. Phone, laptop and tablet batteries only have so many charge cycles in them. The faster you use those cycles, the faster you use up the battery. Charging from 90% is less of a cycle than charging from 5%.

I use my phone. Truck GPS in terrible. I mainly use Waze. Apple Maps arent very good. Google is pretty decent.
If Im in my vehicles, my phone is charging. To use Carplay I must be plugged in.

[Bionic_Man]

I travel for work. Gone somewhere every week. I used to bring a separate gps. But that is just one thing more to bring. And my phone is more up to date.

I use WAZE. Great app. And has real time traffic reports and will also tell you if there is an accident (or LEO) up ahead.