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Garmin vs Phone

Which one sucks less?

  • Total voters
    76
Not a bad hours work. The Instinct and Locus were off 12ft in decent tree cover. I didn't bring the GPSMAP because a wussed out and drove the 9 hr round trip instead of rode.
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Ya. I’ve been using that map for a few weeks. Honestly, it’s all that different at least here where I live. Maybe globally it comes into its own.
 
philipbarrett said:
Running a nav app 100% of the time with the screen brightness at max is already taxing the phone, add in a good Texas afternoon & that red warning comes up pretty quickly, especially if the phone is in a good protective case.

Some experimentation & a 3D printer could probably devise a shade to help shade the screen though?
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Sorry if this is 205…

Amazon product ASIN B072JPDSSP
 
Al Tuna said:
Yes, but don't the good apps tempt you into subscriptions?
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Locus Classic, its like $16, plus whatever you need for maps.

For reference I think I have most of SE Asia, and all of the states West of the Mississippi and I am at most $25 into it.

I think OsmAnd was like $8.....if they went to a sub model I missed it.
 
I prefer to use my Garmin. I already have it, I have owned it for 10 years and its still going strong. Its also built tough handles vibration and rain and wont accidently fall off the bike due to the Touratech mount.

I wouldnt use my main phone under any circumstances. A second hand ruggedised phone, well maybe if I had one. But no point buying one just for one purpose.
 
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Some Dude said:
I prefer to use my Garmin. I already have it, I have owned it for 10 years and its still going strong. Its also built tough handles vibration and rain and wont accidently fall off the bike due to the Touratech mount.

I wouldnt use my main phone under any circumstances. A second hand ruggedised phone, well maybe if I had one. But no point buying one just for one purpose.
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You don't even need a ruggedized phone anymore really. Since the iPhone 6/Galaxy S7 they are ALL IP67 or better rated, just like your garmin.

My S6 was never IP rated, but somehow has survived a couple years, and at least 50,000km on the handlebar sans case (cases just make them overheat) the wireless charging mount costs more than a 3 generation old second hand phone.
 
sc-surfer said:
No. It's Verizon bloatware. It can't be deleted the normal way.
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I didn't say delete. I said deactivate.

To delete is another process that begins with rooting the phone, something Verizon makes it a major pain in the ass to accomplish. It used to be pretty easy, but I ran into snags with my S6, and since I haven't really had that much of an issue.
 
Found it. It was com.vcast.mediamanager. I was able to delete it using ADB.

I've finally got nearly all of the Verizon and Google crap off the phone. We'll see how it runs.
 
I've looked at those Montanas. Seem nice, but horrible reviews. I personally HATE the Garmin ecosystem. Hard to navigate and ya gotta pay for everything. At least for me, the hardware seems pretty cool but the software is a nightmare. YMMV.
 
MVI said:
Anyone use this yet


www.garmin.com

Garmin Montana® 700i | Handheld Hiking GPS with inReach®

Montana® 700i is a handheld GPS with on/off-road navigation, two-way text messaging and interactive SOS via inReach®.
www.garmin.com www.garmin.com
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I just bought one. The only reason being that the 66s is just too small for any faster riding and there aren't any reasonable alternatives.

Haven't had a chance to test it yet but the initial impression is typical Garmin: dated hardware (for the price) and buggy software. Technically it's terrible value for money but that's to be expected.

Just tried to do a map update and it's the usual Garmin shitshow. The device runs out of storage space when trying to update the maps and instead of reporting any error Garmin Express just quits (crashes) and leaves a partially installed map on the device. So you end up with a corrupted map and no errors.

So you gotta manually move some other essential files from the device momentarily out of the way to get the maps installed. And everything takes ages because this top of the line device still uses USB 2.0.

As always, you kinda feel like a complete idiot for paying so much money for these shit bricks. But so far they've been working well and reliably for me in the forest and that's what matters most in the end.
 
ZoomerP said:
And to think, that's their halo product, and it's been out for a few years. Memory is cheap, too. You shouldn't have to do anything but connect it and give approval for the update - done. If there's a need to offload files before the update, that should be automated with the update process.

Garmin is finally moving to USB-C on their latest devices, so there's that.
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It always feels like you move back in time when you handle Garmin navigators. Must be frustrating for the R&D people when the bean counters force you to feed shitty solutions to the people.
 
Ran into my first issue today using a phone, and not a fault of the phone, but the nav set up I'm using. Bought into onyx off road, so far I liked, easy to run and set up. BUT, I needed to import a 4.4 mb gpx file for a ride next weekend and it will not load anything over 4mb. Anyone had issues such as this with different apps like gaia, locus, or Osman? I'm no tech guru, and just generally not that interested in learning all the techno mumbo jumbo. As much as I dislike my old Garmin, I had no trouble loading this particular file.
 
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