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

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Dave

Hi Warden:

I don't think there are any contemporary phones that are designed to run off batteries. Per EU directive, all phones sold in the EU since about 2013 must accept a 5 volt charge from a small USB connection. AA batteries are 1.5 volts each, there's no easy way to divide 5 by 1.5.

If you are really out in the middle of no-where, either a solar charger (for sunny days) or some kind of auxiliary battery pack that outputs 5 volts and has a reasonable amp-hour reserve will probably serve you best.

Michael

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.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com

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.

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Dave

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.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com

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.

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.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com

Something I learned that all you techies probably know: The phones tell if they are connected to something big or small by looking at pins 2 and 3 on the USB input. If these two are shorted your phone battery state will be "Charging (mains)" and you have all the power you can from the wall or vehicle charger. If these pins are not connected the charge rate is limited, the phone will say "Charging (USB)" and if you have enough stuff running you can use power faster than you charge.


My box of AA's thingy gives "USB charging", so GPS only with the music etc. turned off.


I also found a combination of Amazon Kindle charger and USB cable that gave the USB rate, so check before you go.


My tablet has this type of GPS, so yet another back up with 4 hours battery life.


Still, it's better than the crappy power cradle thing TomTom came with that lasted under a year and then requires you to snap the door off the unit and buy a car charger. I can buy a micro-USB cable or car charger in any town, TomTon use their own weird sizes.


Andy

But my question was being able to use AAs without any other gadgets widgets or other accessories.

Well, I did a 7,000 mile trip during November, from Toronto to Alabama to California then back again, and I tried out both navigation methods.

I used the Sygic GPS application running on an Apple 4S for the first 2,000 miles of the trip. It worked, in the sense that it provided me with navigational guidance. It had a few drawbacks:

1) The iPhone is not waterproof, I had to put it in a Baggie whenever it was wet out or was raining.

2) The buttons (soft-keys, actually) on the iPhone were far too tiny to operate when riding the bike and wearing leather gloves (temperatures were near freezing for much of this trip). In fact, the darn buttons were so tiny it was almost impossible to operate them while riding even if I was not wearing gloves. This meant that making any adjustments to the route, display, etc. required a stop at the side of the road.

3) Display could be difficult to see in bright sunlight.

On the other hand, the 'navigation via smartphone' had a few advantages:

4) Less stuff to carry, since I would have taken a phone along with me on this trip anyway.

5) Relatively cheap ($100) application, map subscription, and application add-ons. I already owned the phone, so no additional disbursement there.

After 2,500 miles, I bought a Garmin Zumo 590 and installed it on the motorcycle. It presented the following advantages:

1) Waterproof, huge buttons (soft-keys), easy to operate while riding wearing leather gloves. Very easy to read in bright sunlight - the brighter the sunlight, the easier it was to read (see picture below, which was taken in bright sunlight).

2) Much larger (dimensionally) display, which made it a lot easier to quickly interpret the information with one fast glance. I think the iPhone actually has a higher resolution display (more pixels), but too much information was crammed into the Sygic display, hence it was not easy to interpret quickly.

3) Much easier quick look-up, while riding, of places I wanted to visit ahead of me on my route, such as restaurants, hotels, and gas stations.

4) Fewer button-pushes needed to switch between modes of operation (navigation, phone, music, weather forecasts).

5) It monitored my tire pressure for me, which was nice.

The Garmin had a few disadvantages:

6) It was expensive, $800.

7) Initial install of the cradle & wiring harness took some time.

------------------------------------

What I learned:

- It's quite remarkable that a $100 application running on a smartphone can suffice to provide navigation guidance from Toronto, Canada down to the Gulf Coast of the USA. It wasn't pleasant, but it did the job and got me there.

- Navigation via a smartphone is a bit like a dog walking on its hind legs: What is impressive is that the dog can do it at all, not how well the dog does it.

- If I want to use a smartphone for navigation, either in the car or on the moto, I have to stop the vehicle to make inputs to the smartphone. This is because of the very small control buttons presented.

- The purpose-built Garmin device costs 8 times as much, but is significantly easier to use and to interpret (to view). I'm happy I spent the money buying it.


So, there you have it, a review of both devices over the course of a very long winter motorcycle ride.

My take-away is that if a rider only occasionally needs to use a navigation device on a motorcycle, and already has a smartphone that has a physically large screen (5 inches diagonal or more), then the smartphone with the Sygic application could take the place of a dedicated GPS navigator.

But, if a rider plans to frequently or continually use a GPS device for navigational guidance, I think it would be best - and safest - to buy a waterproof dedicated GPS navigator, preferably one that is designed for motorcycle use.

Michael

The Zumo 590

That was a good road trip PanE.

I am not an iPhone enthusiast so I will not pass comment on that aspect.
However -
I wouldn't, personally, spend 100 of any currency on a smart phone app simply to trial it when there are so many free ones out there.
In fact my smart phone cost less than that in GB pounds.
And, you bought maps when OSM is out there on many apps for free.

Naturally, nor would I spend 800 tokens on a GPS!
So, we are definitely in two different economies.

I don't know anything about the sygic display but many of the competitor apps have displays that can be tweaked i.e. pre-set by the owner/user to display just about whatever is required, or display just the map. I imagine that only the most expensive GPS have that same feature.
One of them that I tried out over a year ago has a pitch, roll and yaw option that might appeal to you e.g. could be useful in a microlight.

I don't arrive at your lessons learnt therefore, primarily for the reason that you trialled just one of the vast range of apps that are on the market (and an expensive one at that!); the thinking about the pros and cons are well explored in earlier posts, including the aspect of urban Vs remote area use of navigation aids.

Incidentally, but of relevance, I would have liked to know how your trial coped with aural navigation - in the sense that I much prefer listening to a navigational aid rather than developing "screen fixation".

I look forward to reading about your future trials!

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Dave

I am not at all a cognoscenti of mobile phones - I used a Blackberry for years because that was what my company gave me. I asked them to give me an iPhone a few years ago because it could run an aviation weather app that would save me a lot of time when working. When I retired, they let me keep the phone, and I have no plans to replace it until it dies. It works, it makes phone calls, it runs a small selection of specialty apps that I find useful. That's enough for me. I'm not a heavy user of the phone, I often ignore it for days at a time.

I only chose that application (which cost about $100, with all the maps and a few select add-ons) because Seoul Joe spoke so highly about it in his many posts earlier in this same thread.

But, what a software developer might term a 'feature' is not necessarily a 'benefit' to the user. I remember that 10 years ago, a user could heavily customize the screen appearance and level of data presented on the Garmin GPS units, for example, the StreetPilot III. I spend hours fooling around trying to fine-tune the device so it displayed only what I wanted, in a layout that I thought best.

Beginning about 7 years ago, with the introduction of the Nuvi series, Garmin thinned out about 90% of the user-configurable controls from the display. I remember complaining about that (I was a beta-tester for Garmin at the time) and being told by the software team to just settle down and try the new strategy out for a couple of months. Sure enough, a couple of months later, I realized that it was actually a lot simpler and faster to use the newer design... too much user customization ability can actually be a burden, rather than a benefit. Sort of like DOS 3.1 vs. Windows 7, if you know what I mean.

Since then, advances in processing power and continued software development have greatly simplified operation of the Garmin devices. When I fitted the Zumo 590, the biggest choice I had to make (and about the only choice I truly needed to make) was whether to run it in landscape or portrait mode. As for everything else, the device was designed thoughtfully enough to ensure that it gave me the information I needed when I needed it, and didn't bother me with unnecessary information when I didn't need it.

Very careful attention that the software development team paid to what was displayed when on the screen meant that I rarely needed to adjust the zoom level, or the brightness, or go 'digging' into menus to find more detailed information.

Oh God no. The worst that can happen when fooling around with consumer electronics for vehicle navigation is that you get lost. The stakes are higher in flight. For any aviation-related matters, the device needs to comply with the TSO (Technical Standards Orders) set out for aviation use, otherwise I think it is safest to simply leave it off the aircraft. The only possible exception I can see to that would be using an automotive navigator (phone or dedicated) to assist with visual navigation in extremely small recreational aircraft (ultralights or microlights). But, my background is commercial transport aircraft, I have no experience with recreational aircraft.

What I tried to do was compare the best available phone-based navigator (that evaluation having been provided by Seoul Joe) with the best available dedicated GPS navigator.

A very good question.

I was disappointed with the quality of the aural prompts provided by the Sygic smartphone application. It provided 'correct' prompts, in the sense that the directions given were appropriate, but the quality of the synthetic voice was wretched - it sounded like a cartoon character, and the speed of the voice was too fast. There was no implementation of phrasing. It was not, by any means, 'natural speech'.

On the other hand, the Zumo 590 voice prompt quality was a great (and pleasant) surprise to me. Garmin has made major improvements - full order of magnitude improvements - to the quality of the audio prompts.

Not only were the voices entirely natural and extremely easy to understand, the speech was 'natural' - phrases, pauses, and inflection almost perfectly matched natural speech. Even dialect could be selected (British English used the term 'slip roads', American English spoke of 'on and off ramps'). The aural prompts also took full advantage of the road attributes contained in the database. Hence, a series of aural prompts for a single right turn might go like this:

(2 km prior): In 2 km, turn right on Highway 10.

(1 km prior): Be in either of the two right lanes. (or) Be in the right lane. (At the same moment, a photo-realistic view of the available lanes would be presented, with the desired lanes clearly highlighted, as illustrated in the image below).

(400 m prior): Turn right at the Esso station.

(100 m prior): Turn right on Highway 10 now.

I like voice prompts, but for me, they serve a different and non-overlapping purpose to the map displayed on the screen. The voice prompts provide tactical guidance, meaning, they tell you what you have to do right now. The map, on the other hand, provides strategic guidance - it shows you what your overall navigational plan is, and how you are progressing towards your goal.

Lane Guidance provided with voice prompt for appropriate lane
The picture doesn't match the example I provided above, but I think you will get the general idea.


Thank you for that compliment, but I don't think I will be doing any more trials of navigational equipment. Now that I have figured out how the Zumo 590 works, I intend to use it to assist me in achieving my primary objective, which is pleasant, relaxed sight-seeing and touring on my motorcycle.

As for the phone application, I'll keep it on my phone. I can see it being useful in the future when I visit other countries (without the motorcycle). For example, I will be going to Sudan and Vietnam in the new year... I have no desire to bring a dedicated navigator along, and the phone app should be perfect for whatever navigation needs (pedestrian or in a taxi, for example) I might have in those countries.

Michael

That's asking for the known road. (Dutch figure of speech that may not translate well ;-) )

Off course you can't. Large phones have 2.5Ah batteries because they're designed to allow for heavy use. AA's don't have that much.
But it's a moo point. You can use AA's but you'll probably never have too. I only use external batteries when I'm flying around. Besides that power is everywhere.
But if you would need to walk it out it'll probably be fully charged because it's been on bike power all that time. Turn the power save on, screen on min brightness, wifi and Bluetooth off, phone on GSM only (wish offline mode could still use GPS) and you've got 2 days of GPS use providing you don't want to see where you are every 5 mins. That's up to 100 km walking. Haven't seen any accounts of that happening along a road or trail.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com

For 100Km of walking one or other of the compass app(s) should be useful.
Has anyone used them? There are dozens of them available.

I wonder how much battery power one of those consumes.
Anyway, put one of them with a paper map and start walking!

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Dave

I always carry a Silva compass with me just in case. Most time purple have studied a map enough to know what's roughly around and in which direction in a 100 km radius.
Beyond that, there's always Bear Grylls shows for "how to navigate the wild" homework. ;-)

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com