Phones as GPS units

For all those apple heads out there.

I found two apps for the iphone which might be of interest to some folks.

The first is a walking/hiking recording app called Sprint GPS. It makes use of the inbuilt gps of the iphone to record your track speed, distance, calorie usage and altitude and plots it on google maps. It looks like it requires line of site with towers though. So it has its uses for training.

The other is Gaia GPS which requires line of site to down load tracks and maps. However once these have been loaded it seems like it runs as a stand alone gps system. You can download gpx files with tracks and maps and or scan your own paper maps and save them as gpx files and then upload to your iphone. I have not really got to grips with it yet or done any uploads of maps.

I don't believe that this will take the place of a gps system, but it has its uses. They are both available as free or pay to use apps.

If anyone has any additional info on the gpx file uploads to iphone I would like to know how to go about it, and if anyone has used these or other, it would make good reading.

I am replying 2 years later!

Just bought an iPhone 4S. I intend to leave my Garmin at home. 10m accuracy good enough.

Planning to be in SA in October.

What have you discovered? I only use waypoints (position and altitude). A "go to" is good. A compass is good.

I know to set the phone to airplane mode (phone off) to save battery. I am no slouch, what I can't find I shall create.

Try Motion-X-GPS app for iPhone. My choice in terms of features. AFAIK it is also quite cheap. Have had a number of successful day hikes, including some new scrambling routes that the iPhone traced accurately enough to assist during the decent.

Also great for cycling offcourse.

Hi Guys, great site!

If mostly trolled the site reading allot of posts, so I'd like to formally introduce myself.

I am from Kzn and hike the mzimkulu wilderness area frequently sleeping in (non-tourist) caves or camping on escarpments. I love the place, water is clean and readily available and beautiful as heck.

NOw to the question in the subject. Does anyone know of or use an app that can save maps to your device and also allows saving of GPS coordinates? I would like to track and keep record of the caves I have slept in and distance traveled. I have slept in a few caves unmarked on the maps I have so would also like to tie down if they are known or not by their co-ordinates.

Google maps only keeps the saved map for 30 days, so that wont work and there are bunch of apps on playstore that id rather not download and try unless someone has experience in or recommends one.

Thanks allot

I use OruxMaps, pretty simple but functional.

Welcome,

I use backcountry navigator app. backcountrynavigator.com/
It is a paid app but you can explore the app using the trial version for 2 weeks, I think.

You can either make use of the offline map feature and basically just download the area you will be hiking.
Alternatively downloaded a map for SA - OpenAndroMaps - www.openandromaps.org/en/downloads/africa which has contour lines, a number of hiking trials, huts, caves etc.

Hope this helps.

Wow thanks allot for the quick response. Im checking out the apps now, just need to find which one is not that great of a resource hogs and battery drainer. I think a 3 day hike is in order

I haven't tried any of the other ones mentioned, but I have had great success with this one:

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codesector.maverick.lite&hl=en

What I like about it:
- It's free
- You can load KML tracks to it that you have created in Google Earth.
- It can track your progress in real time on the above mentioned KML track, including distances to and from your proposed start/end point etc.
- Most importantly, once you have zoomed in a map online, it saves your recent maps in its's cache, so you don't have to have an internet connection to see a Google Earth type image of your surroundings while you are standing there. Obviously the cache size is limited, so it won't save satellite images for every hike you've ever done, but zoom in on the surrounding area of your upcoming hike and it should have the whole image available for viewing without an internet connection for the duration of said hike.

Hi and Welcome!!

I use strava to record my hikes, Free version is very functional you just cant download other users GPX files. The user will have to download their own track and pass it on.

I then use GPX Tracker or similar to load tracks and follow with that if need be.

Strava is nice as it gives you your stats for the hike, moving time, altitude gain, max altitude and distance. Calorie counter and if you have a compatible heart rate monitor you can use that to!!

Enjoy