You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Don’t want to pop my iPhone on the bar and crash it. Any reasonably up to date cheap phone with a good clear bright screen for mapping, bike app use etc but most importantly real world 4 hours-ish battery life? Android I guess.
I'm selling an older iPhone with a bar mount included:
If you have a specific app you want to use I can check that it will still run
an idea of budget rather than 'cheap' might help but I'd say that the Moto E and G series phones are worth a look. Some have bigger capacity batteries than standard and the quality is good for the money. Worth checking the specs of any lower price phone to check it has the sensors you want for navigation. While nearly all will have GPS, they may not have a compass / magnetometer.
Is that 4hrs screen permanently on or 4 hrs riding and switching the screen on just to check navigation etc?
For the latter I easily get 4hrs from a 2017 Galaxy A5 with ANT+ heart rate monitor connected and using OruxMaps for navigation.
So I reckon any reasonably modern phone would suffice.
I wrote a little program that lets me wake up the screen using the "play" button on some old dead headphones that I tape to the handlebars (so I don't have to take my hands off the bars to wake the phone)
At some point I want to the use "always on" display (OLED) to show speed, heart rate, bread crumb etc without fully waking the screen.
Btw I think waterproofing (IP68) would be a good idea too!
You can get a Lezyne Super GPS for under £100 new, been using one for almost two years, firmware updates this year seem to have sorted out issues from 2018 when they were doing firmware updates for the new generation Mega XL (which can be had for £150 or less).
Samsung A3 or A5. GPS, Bluetooth and Ant+
@n0b0dy0ftheg0at - I get the advantages of dedicated bike GPS units* but compared to cheap IP68 phones with big screens for detailed off road maps you can also use as a music player, chuck a PAYG data SIM in for data, blah blah blah they seem pretty expensive.
*(and use a cheap GPS, ANT+ one when navigation is straightforwards)
Yes, has to be a phone to run Blevo.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 or 3.
Easily holds 12-14 hours of full sync, data, Strava, GPS, occasional Google maps/Bing maps checks.
Also was able to squeeze full 8 hours of all of that plus full screen on navigation.
Got mine "3" for 120 quid posted, brand new.
Cheers!
I.
I've just got a blackview 5800 off Amazon for £150. For work, riding and outdoors stuff in general
IP68, something like a 5400mah battery. Seems great to me.
Need a dongle for ant+ but I can use bluetooth for my HRM.
I have an old xperia Z1 that is great too and has ant+. Probably get a second hand/refurbished one cheap.
I use the Maverick GPS navigation app that has O.S. maps you can cache for free along with all the other usual map layers.
Thanks all.