Topo/GPS App for iPhone

That one looks pretty good for a compromise on weight and charges.

I need to experiment with recording my track all day on my phone and seeing how long the battery lasts. And then maybe I can get an accurate idea of how big of a battery I need to carry.
 
Bumping this thread as I've been trying out Gaia. I like having access to the CalTopo maps and downloading them is sort of okay so long as you don't need a large swath of land.

That said, I hate its track exporting. I prefer kml over gpx. When I export my tracks via email, I get a malformed kml file with numerous parse errors. Google Earth won't even open it. Have any other Gaia users encountered this?
 
I haven't hit any issues with downloading large swaths of maps. Whats happening when you do that?

On tracks, I have no input. All I've done so far is occasional use for waypoints, etc. Overall, I'm very pleased, but perhaps once I give tracks a go that could change.
 
No issues, I just don't like the drag-and-drop interface. On large selections you have to zoom so far out that it's hard to know if your edges are correct.
 
I just got an email from Gaia saying they are going to implement my suggestion to have multiple waypoint icons. That makes me happy.
 
I've completely moved over to GAIA GPS and have even tried to use it as my goto backpacking GPS on my iPhone. Left my Garmin at home and carried it for four days in the Grand Canyon last weekend. I like the program and I like their continuous improvement and customer service. That said it is still rough around the edges. And on my backpack trip....I had to convert to turn it on occasionally mode half way through the trip due to battery issues. I had a recharge battery ready to give it another charge BUT I FORGOT THE CABLE! :facepalm:
 
langutah said:
I've completely moved over to GAIA GPS and have even tried to use it as my goto backpacking GPS on my iPhone. Left my Garmin at home and carried it for four days in the Grand Canyon last weekend. I like the program and I like their continuous improvement and customer service. That said it is still rough around the edges. And on my backpack trip....I had to convert to turn it on occasionally mode half way through the trip due to battery issues. I had a recharge battery ready to give it another charge BUT I FORGOT THE CABLE! :facepalm:
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Ouch! I bet you wish you'd packed the cable and forgotten that heavy battery, eh? I haven't used it for tracking yet, but I've been amazed at how long my battery has lasted just using it for GPS and I have not been good about turning it on and off from airplane mode. I've packed a charger on each trip this year and have yet to use it.
 
That's been my problem too. The phone GPS just isn't reliable enough for when you have to have it. I've been using Backcountry Navigator on a tablet while driving. It's great driving, but I still carry the Garmin hiking. I put a lot of effort into downloading maps on the phone before our Patagonia trip and when we finally got down there, it only initialized once. The other times it would never find a position even after leaving it on for hours.
 
River said:
That's been my problem too. The phone GPS just isn't reliable enough for when you have to have it.
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FWIW, the GPS on my Samsung Galaxy S3 was horrible at getting a signal. It regularly took 15-45 minutes to get a position. My iPhone 5S grabs it and holds it instantly, literally no wait at all. I'm pretty convinced that the GPS in the S3 is a total POS.
 
That would be great if it's been fixed. I was using a Droid X (hopefully not stealing your iPhone thread). It's worked well in the US, but even leaving it on for hours down there, it wouldn't find a position. I was very glad to have the Garmin too since one of the hikes had a lot of off trail route finding in the snow. It had no problem locking onto satellites.
 
I've had good luck with my droid razr max (except for one time when the phone froze up). However, I will never buy a motorola phone again. To the best of my knowledge, motorola is the only phone maker that shuts off GPS in airplane mode. My next phone will be a note 3. Removable battery (so I can bring two on a trip), huge screen, and awesome battery life.
 
Aldaron said:
I ended up committing to Motion-X GPS. It doesn't have the CalTopo maps by default, but if you pay $5, and can figure out how to do it (I can help), you can add the CalTopo maps and downloadable satellite images.

For me, Motion-X just had a lot more features, so that's what sold me on it"
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I've used both Motion-X apps (one for hiking & one for driving) for over a few years now, and have really liked them both, but I've yet to really test it in someplace that I didn't know.

So I want to take you up on your offer to help. I'm doing Coyote Gulch next week and I've never been there. I've created a track in Google Earth that supposedly will lead me to an easy entrance into Hurricane Wash. I converted it to a .gpx file and loaded into Motion-X.

So how do I load the satellite images & CalTopo maps - and for a complete noob - what are the benefits of said maps/images?
Do these maps allow you to zoom in to a degree as to be functional on the ground, in an unknown area?

I tested another .gpx track around my neighborhood with the default satellite imagery - good, but did not go in as far as I would have liked.
 
I sent you a PM.

But this is the website I used to help me with it:

http://tlcfaq.com/main/2013/08/motion-x-custom-maps/

The USGS topo maps are definitely beneficial out in the desert because very little of the desert has changed in the last 50 years, and the satellite imagery gets as far down as the satellite imagery that you see when you use Google Maps on your computer, so that's very useful, too.

The Motion-X topo maps, which are really the Open Cycle Maps, are useful if you don't want all of the detail of the USGS maps, or if the area you want has a lot of new stuff that's not on the old USGS maps.

Just remember that you'll need to download maps of the area you'll be going to before you leave so that you'll have the maps available offline when you're out in the middle of nowhere.

Let me know if you need help with any of it.

On my week long trip last week, I didn't even take my Garmin.
 
^ sucky. I heard that some of them need to acquire the satellites, then you can turn it on to airplane mode. I hear the samsung phones have GPS that works while on airplane mode. I'll test it with my wife's phone next week.
 
sixstringsteve said:
^ sucky. I heard that some of them need to acquire the satellites, then you can turn it on to airplane mode. I hear the samsung phones have GPS that works while on airplane mode. I'll test it with my wife's phone next week.
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That would defeat the whole point of airplane mode (turning off all radios to avoid EM interference with other electronics).

On iOS you can achieve what you're talking about by turning off wifi, Bluetooth and cellular network. This will leave the GPS antenna and traditional radio phone radio active. Doing so cuts significantly down on battery usage. So will turning screen brightness way down.
 
Nick said:
I'm pretty convinced that the GPS in the S3 is a total POS.
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Same in my S2. They seemed to have fixed the issue in the S4!
 
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