2 pence
 

That is odd- Have you tried:

• Where To
• All Pois

On my units, this is how you find POI's built into the maps - any maps - including OSM

As far as having a slow device, I can't say I agree- For me, it is no fun sitting on a cooking engine or under the rain at standstill in an unknown town (which is where Turn-by-Turn is really appreciated) waiting for directions due to the receiver/processor not being good enough in built up (concrete and steel) or poor signal areas.

I enjoy my GPS & Glonass enabled units- for they really make a difference especially when routing and taking a wrong turn- Maybe Garmin will add Beidou to the next generation- hopefully by the time China will open its borders without travel restrictions ( yes, I know- it is a long shot! doh)

I also used and compared many android nav apps and the one I kept is the free app called MapFactor Navigator but it is not as accurate nor as responsive as my bespoke satnavs- I also find that my smartphone also heats up a great deal ( no brands mentioned!)- The maps rotate to direction of travel and a host more of useful features too.

If without any other electronic nav aid, it does work better than those others I have tried, keeps OSM maps updated and stored either in your phones' memory or in the sd card- you chose. It does not replace a bespoke sat.nav unit imho.
As a backup, (or main unit) although the smaller screen makes it harder to read when moving along- I recommend the 64 series and in particular the ST as it offers the largest available memory capability ( at the moment!) -

I'll doublecheck but yes I have, I'm typing this in a grotty campsite in Asilah, OSM has the POI but the garmin says there are no campsites when I search for one. Osm running on the phone app displays the poi as well

Sounds like you've been using crap apps. Give Backcountry Navigator a go. I stopped taking a dedicated GPS into the backcountry ages ago.

No, I don't have shares in that venture. It's just awesome.

10 best apps - but which are they??
 

Therein lies one of the prime reasons for this thread: I have played around with a few apps over the past couple of years (some are in the list above and some are not) but I haven't found significant differences between them to be worth noting for myself, much less worth putting in print.
Basically, they all do the task, more or less, and it is difficult to beat "free".

In summary, I've been on cruise control just noting the input in Seouljoe's thead, and elsewhere. :innocent:

It is still a growing market, with both more customers and more software writers/developers - surely they can't all survive in the market, so it is much more complex than, for example, the issue of Betamax Vs VHS which was a simple two horse race in comparison.

I guess they are on bikes and not other vehicles, using a box.
How are these guys fixing the boxes to their bikes?
Typical in the UK are these, and similar:-
Black Splash Proof Bicycle Bike Frame Case Cover For iPhone 5 5S iPod Touch 5 | eBay
This one comes from Hong Kong - half way around the world for £7.

How depends on your creativity. The plastic ball/socket mounts are suspect to me for long distance. A Ram style ubolt design is probably better.

A friend of mine placed his on his handle bar clamps of his trail bike. He used a generic pelican case at 1 point, and "upgraded" so this one I believe after that.
Pelican i1015 Case

Still no touch screen capability, but that's just 1 example.
For trail riding you tend to stop to navigate anyway. It's more a case of "where did the path go" rather than "turn right at the next intersection".

This aspect/subject hasn't really been explored but just mentioned now and again viz a viz the increasing sophistication of the technology, or perhaps the latter is all just a ploy of the marketing people?
= the whole philosophy of using a GPS, what peoples' expectations are when they "grab the technology" with or without some level of understanding of what it does.
And then there are all those people who just got by before GPS was invented/developed and they just did not know what they were "missing" from their future lives.

I didn't realise until a few days ago that Garmin are selling tyre pressure monitors (about £70 a pair) - presumably they feedback to the Garmin display so you can have the lats and longs for where you deliberately reduced your pressures to go dirt riding.
How cool is that!!

Ha ha. Saves putting in a way point. They should do that for fuel. Not sure how it would work but it would be convenient.

Not sure if this hasn't been explorered. People want what they want. Most people don't like making decisions and will follow the directions all the way into the ocean. This actually happened!
It's all started with turn by turn for the phone to help out the lost city dwellers. The big shortcoming used to be the lack of ability in the back country, but they've exceeded the establishment on that now too.
I just mentioned that in anticipation of criticism for providing a solution that doesn't involve the ability to use the touch screen. I've got a case from GPS for less but haven't tried it out enough yet to comment. Apparently the life proof case had a used by date, but it was pretty long in my mind. About a year from memory.

There is a regional element within the discussions in here i.e. what may be on sale on one continent may not be easily available on another. An exception is the software which has pretty much blown apart earlier efforts in some markets to protect those same markets (with such devices as regional DVDs).
You prompted me to search for "gps for less" which here in the UK brings up this type of product for fixing a phone to a bike.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Tough Waterproof Mount Case By Ultimate Adodns


[QUOTE=tmotten;483672 People want what they want..[/QUOTE]
Yep, and not necessarily what they need: so marketing works OK.

They trade under GPS for less on eBay. I bought their stuff when I was living in Australia last year. Their charging gear is really good. Cases also thus far.

Ah ha I double checked and the pois are there it's just garmins search doesn't pick them up. So if I go to where to and then select campsite everything it gives me is in a different country coincidentally the closest country I have a garmin map installed for. Bit of a PITA but I like free stuff and OSM is great.

Another point getting back to the topic - how many smart phones can run of AA batteries if needed? Yes I know there's options for emergency battery banks or solar chargers but I'm talking in the back end of no where when everything else to provide power fails but the one village shop has AA duracells

I also like OSM and have a lot of regard for what all those people are doing in collaboratively building the data, constantly updating.
Like you I have also found that my old Nuvi doesn't react too well when searching for things when I have the OSM map selected: I found this a while ago when playing around with said garmin and as a consequence I have tended to not select the OSM maps on the SD card but revert to Garmins's own maps either in the Nuvi memory or on other SD cards.
It's a shame, but the saving grace for me has been the number of phone apps which are adopting OSM mapping. They do this either directly or via others, such as Mapquest who provide access to OSM.

There are probably no smartphones which power directly from AAs but it is quite OK to plug into any USB socket - on a tablet, a notebook, a computer, a 5V socket on the vehicle 12V system or even one of these if you really do want to utilize AAs:-
PortaPow AA USB Emergency Charger
Good value at £5.

Osm gets better daily.

The batteries point is a minor one but for some people might be useful. I know my phone won't run on battery power for very long whilst using gps but my Montana and pocket full of AA's would get my to safety/help if the truck got stuck and I was one foot.

Maps
 

Maps being the fundamental behind all of the navigation discussed in here I turned to reviewing where we are nowadays with digital maps.
A long while ago I used to access Multimap, a UK based company, but now I see that they have been gobbled up by Bing mapping - so now it is part of the Microsoft empire.
Multimap.com - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The owner of multimap did OK out of the deal also; all the more kudos to the OSM contributors.

List of maps of the UK and Ireland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Incidentally, on the hardware front, it was forecast a while back by Seouljoe that MS would drop the Nokia moniker: sure enough:-
Microsoft looks set to drop Nokia name from smartphones

Besides the plethora of AA chargers out there, there are also heaps of solar options. No need to ever run out of battery.

For an 8 hour hike my S4 only uses about 20% battery depending on how often I check the screen. If it's cold, or it's not full to begin with, I bring a chocolate bar sized backup battery. They given them away as marketing material now.