iPhone gps apps and battery life

[AmyL]

I'm planning a trip to New South Wales, and working on route and map details. Here's my intro:
http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7320

I have been accumulating information about iPhone gps/map apps and best practices for conserving battery life. Information about conserving battery is in this article, including description of battery draining bugs in the popular apps ViewRanger and MotionX:
http://adventurealan.com/iphone4gps.htm

And an annotated list of 80+ apps that I've evaluated is here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15393086/BPL/iPhoneGPSapps.htm

I've been using Maplets (http://www.mobilemaplets.com/) to easily download and view georeferenced park maps. The app has quite thorough coverage of US parks, but their inventory of Australian park maps is anemic. Last week I asked them to add the maps from WalkingCoastalSydney.com.au, and they did so within a few days of my request! Are you good hikers in Australia using this app yet? If not, you should give it a try. And, it would be a great help to tourists like me if you gave Maplets a list of Australian park maps (with URLs), so they can build their inventory of Australian park maps. The app doesn't have a rich feature set, it simply displays the map and your location on the map - it doesn't replace GPS Kit, Gaia, MotionX or other full featured apps, but it's a great compliment to them.

Amy L, Palo Alto, California
amyl.smugmug.com

[andrewbish]

Hi Amy

Welcome to the forum!

That's a terrific iphone resource you've compiled and this 3GS / Motion-X user thanks you! If you plan to go off-trail in Australia I can also recommend Mud-maps, which uses better topo maps.

BTW - the page listing out the gps app comparisons doesn't render too well in IE8 or 9..but did work ok in Goggle Chrome. (I'm tipping you were a open source developer )

Andrew

[sthughes]

Nice comparison - I hadn't realised just how many mapping apps had appeared!

My favourite quote from your comparison:

Holy cow, Australians are paying a fortune!

Ahh yep

[Son of a Beach]

I'm currently developing a new app for iPhone that overlays your own custom maps (eg, scanned in from paper, or purchased in digital format, including JPEG, PNG, OZF2) on top of Google Maps and/or OpenStreetMaps. I'll release it publicly once I've finished adding all the features from Bit Map into it.

I'm still not sure whether to call it Bit Map 4.0, or if I should give it a new name and version 1.0. Currently it is being developed under a new name.

It looks very cool to see a map of the entire world (or at least your section of it), with your own maps overlayed over the top of it scaled to fit the world map, at whatever scale you happen to be viewing it. And as you zoom in, the more granular scales of your own maps disappear, revealing any finer scaled maps you have of the area in view, according to which one best fits the current scale. I'm already liking it waaaaay better than Bit Map, and in fact am using it for real, instead of Bit Map, even though it's still seriously lacking in other features. Still a bit awkward to install maps, but I'm working on some improvements in that area too.

[AmyL]

Andrew, phooey about IE. I've tested it using Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. I'm just saving it from excel in html format, that's easy for me because I update it a few times a week. I took the easy way out and put a disclaimer at the top. If you think you know how to fix it, I'm all ears. The source spreadsheet is here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15393086/BPL/iPhoneGPSapps.xls

sthughes, We won't be in any wilderness areas in Australia, just doing a straight-forward coastal walk, so I won't spring the big bucks for MUD MAP. My current plan is to use GPS Kit with OpenCycleMaps and kml/gpx files pre-loaded.

Nik, I didn't know about Bit Map. I've added it to my table of apps and will try to get to it soon!

I'm doing my best to keep a complete inventory of hiking gps/mapping apps, so speak up if you know of others I should add.

Amy

[Son of a Beach]

Nik, I didn't know about Bit Map. I've added it to my table of apps and will try to get to it soon!

Bit Map is one of the very few apps in which you can actually install any arbitrary map you can get your hands on. Of course this has the disadvantage of meaning that the map has to be calibrated, which is tedious, and optimised (large images simply do not play well on small devices, so the image has to be split into many small tiles). This makes installing maps in Bit Map a bit tedious. I do have a very good idea to improve this in a future version (or perhaps in the new app, depending which way I go).

[AmyL]

I'n the coming weeks I plan to update the article, and I'd like input to help make it more clear, thorough, accurate. Here's a list of changes I plan to make, and a list of things I'm seeking input about. If you have ideas or info that will make the article better, please let me know.
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin ... d_id=70148

BackpackingLight has been having big problems recently with spam forum posts, so they have temporarily disabled posts by non members. Since you probably won't be able to post over there, please give me any info and suggestions here in this thread.

Thanks very much, Amy