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not resolvedHi
What's the best phone app to record your distance when the phone signal is sporadic or non existent? I currently use Map My Ride (I like the mile progress announcements) and Strava but both, especially Strava can be duff when there's no mobile signal.
Thanks
I like MapMyRide.
I had always assumed that all the recording was done on the iPhone and all that was required was the gps signal(?)
Ah, but what is 'GPS' in the context of phones? This article explains quite well why location accuracy may be worse outside of cell tower coverage.
I don't see why any app would be better than another when signal is poor or nonexistent, unless they have different algorithms for filtering and smoothing erroneous location data.
I was using both Map my Ride and Strava last week when I was in Brora. There were clearly times that Map my Ride was not working as the time taken for some miles was a lot longer than it had previously been for similar gradients. Strava was even worse for some of the days and had stopped working halfway through a ride drawing a big straight line to the finish.
I'm cycling the Hebrides in a few weeks and recall having issues with a phone signal and consequently the app the last time I did it.
Phone apps also have a habit of pausing if they aren't in focus. This can mean a tracking app will no longer track you after you so to take a photo unless you bring the tracker back to the foreground. That could potentially explain the issue with Strava.
@Murun Buchstansangur: This article explains quite well why location accuracy may be worse outside of cell tower coverage.
I think that article is incomplete in at least one respect, which is that phones can and will detect WiFi networks and Bluetooth devices as well as cell towers to augment GPS. Admittedly if you're out of range of a cell tower then you're very likely nowhere near a WiFi hotspot or static Bluetooth device either, but in urban locations visibility of WiFi networks especially can be much easier than cell tower pings for pinpointing the phone's location.
IIRC DCRainmaker had a good example of the potential pitfalls of AGPS in one of his early tests of phone-based location tracking - in that case on an Apple phone - when a temporary loss of satellite coverage caused a major jump in where the phone though it was, because the "assistance" was so inaccurate cf the true satellite-based location.
The possibly good news is that you should be able to turn off AGPS through your phone's settings (on mine it's under Location, and then the rather oddly named "Google location accuracy" under the Advanced option). Ideally, with AGPS disabled then, in a tracking scenario, the app should just straight-line from the last known true GPS location to the next good one, rather than unknowingly relying on potentially flaky guesses by the phone's location service. Obviously not so great if the satellite "not spot" is quite large, but arguably still better than AGPS which, as the article suggests, is really designed to help with "where am I and how do I get where I want to be?" type functions rather than recording an actual route followed.
FWIW my GPS watch does an an excellent job of tracking my rides without any augmented location functionality. Sometimes a single-function device is a better solution than a general purpose device trying to do the job alongside multiple other tasks...
I use Strava for recording most of my rides (and hillwalks) and I use 'flight mode' when the reception is poor (to save the battery juice) and it works fine when I am outside. Don't really have issues with it. Sorry, I know it's not much help.
I like OruxMaps for all sorts of use cases. It's an absolute pig to configure (more a portable GIS than a mobile mapping app) but if you want to trace and export a route just how you like it, it's superb. It is not really aimed at cycling so it doesn't compute fun metrics for you.
Fixes for location-tracking issues with apps in the background vary between different versions of android. Current state of Android 11 is described here:
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/11/privacy/location
TL;DR you need to separately enable background location access in a permissions setting page AND the app must ask for the permissions it needs correctly.
Sensible apps tell you they haven't got the permission and how to get it. Not so sensible apps just stop working in a variety of bizarre ways.
It's rather less than ideal.
So, a bit random.
Partly depends how phones and apps deal with (potentially) conflicting signals.
Using airplane/flight mode in the wilds might be a good option.
You won’t get your emails, but…
Orux works well completely offline. A full topo basemap (vector, not raster) of Scotland with elevation data fits in about 300Mb of storage. Pretty decent.
Getting all this working is somewhat painful.
A Garmin Etrex is a good option for going into the sticks with very long battery life (and AA batteries so easy to replace).
For a good while the two main contenders for me have been Locus Maps and Oruxmaps. Both decent. I trust the developer of Oryxmaps having had an email exchange with him some years ago, but it's not well designed in usability terms. There's an older free version available which can be directly installed - because I trust the developer I do this (in theory a risky thing).
Both of these work nicely with Openandromaps downloads. These are from a different team of people - and can be used in all sorts of apps. These are free. Drawn from Openstreetmap data of course.
The reason this is a good solution is that you can change the style of the map - quite radically. There are lots of different styles available - called 'themes'.
All of which means you have a mapping app which doesn't need to get its maps from the internet - they're all on the phone. And (subject to the details already discussed) if you're just using the normal GPS signal the phone signal is irrelevant.
BUT I agree, this all requires a bit of setup. Not particularly complex, just multi-stage. Downloading maps, downloading map styles ('themes'), unzipping the downloaded files, telling the app where the maps and where the themes are stored.
And learning how to use the interface of that app - not least as you try to tell the app about the maps. This can get messy and hugely irritating.
Then there's definitely the thing about the phone putting apps to sleep to look out for.
Worth it if none of the above sounds too scary.
Also... after many years, have learned that nothing is static in internet land. There may be new apps emerge. Either Oruxmaps or Locus recently announced some kind of subscription service (can't remember which). There may be new sources of offline maps which I've not seen.
OR - if you like, find a simpler tracking app which doesn't show maps at all. There are lots and lots of these. Some well designed, some with adverts, some rubbish. Key for me is to be able to control how often the GPS points are plotted.
(Other apps are available if you're prepared to pay - some of these are probably pretty good - I like the free solutions!)
I went with the "non-free" app-store version of Orux which was a snip at £4
Happy to support the developer for less than the price of a pint!
I might try Locus sometime.
Agree that persuading Orux to load one's carefully-downloaded map dataset is a royal PITA! Found a good set of instructions for this, but (predictably) I can no longer find them.
I live in Edinburgh and I have developed by own app so I would appreciate some people trying it out: https://www.worldbikemap.app/
It's designed to be simple to use. At the moment (May '24) it does not record your rides but that will be added soon. Please let me know what you think ben@bencollins.co.uk
While I mostly use it for motorcycling, I have a phone-based GPS setup that works equally well for walking and cycling.
I have an old Samsung A320 that is fairly waterproof, and it has no SIM: it's just 'a computer'.
I run Magic Earth which uses offline maps, and this is my main satnav when riding. It does me remarkably well, with worldwide maps available. It knows about speed limits and toll roads and it has voice directions that I can listen to using my Bluetooth helmet intercom.
What Magic Earth doesn't do is record a breadcrumb track, so I have a separate app for this. I'm using GPS Logger, which is so small and neat an app it would probably fit on my Palm Pilot. :-) I can set the record interval to suit my activity, but usually every 3 seconds is fine. Once ended, Logger generates a standard GPX file that includes any annotations/waypoints I've entered during transit. Magic Earth can open the GPX tracks once saved, or I can export and do whatever.
Locus Maps is the main contender in motorcycling circles, and is supported by apps like Drive Mode Dashboard, and Carpe Iter's handlebar controllers. I might try DMD when I eventually upgrade the enduro bike's dashboard.
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