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.

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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