What does the future hold for bike GPS?

[Kermit power]

Having hijacked the Aldi thread long enough, I thought I'd start a separate thread for this.

I used to use a Garmin Edge 800. The first one died because the power button failed, and Garmin made me pay £75 or so to replace it. This second one then failed due to water ingress past the frankly rubbish USB port cover, so I set about finding something else instead...

Having looked at other dedicated devices, I've actually settled on a Sony Xperia Z2 to replace my old phone. It's waterproof, it recognises my ANT+ cadence, speed and HR sensors and it's got an insane battery life. I've had it a week, and having taken it off charge at around 06:30 every morning, I've yet to see it drop below 45% before bedtime at 23:00.

The other thing I've just ordered is a Cateye Strada Smart Computer. It's tiny - about the size of a box of matches - and connects to the phone via Bluetooth, so it can display speed, cadence, heart rate and all that sort of stuff on the bars without needing to actually measure them all itself.

So far, all of this has cost less than a Garmin Edge 810, and I've got a completely new Android phone into the bargain.

Personally, I reckon the standalone GPS for bikes will be dead within a couple of years. It certainly is for me, as there's nothing I could do with the Garmin which I can't do with this set up. What do other people think?

[whatleytom]

Trouble is if you start using a power meter, with the exception of a Garmin, nothing that I know of is able to display the power metrics you might need/want. Let alone allow you to upload it in a convenient way. I plug my garmin in, and all rides are auto synced to Strava and Training Peaks.

Added to that the ability to create laps on the fly, makes tracking intervals etc way easier than I can imagine it would be on a phone.

For the casual cyclist I can imagine using a phone is fine though.

Personally I see the future of them just being better. Bigger/clearer edge to edge screens, live tracking that isn't a pain to set up would be good too. I imagine live segments will become more of a thing in the near future too.

[Kermit power]

whatleytom said:

Trouble is if you start using a power meter, with the exception of a Garmin, nothing that I know of is able to display the power metrics you might need/want. Let alone allow you to upload it in a convenient way. I plug my garmin in, and all rides are auto synced to Strava and Training Peaks.

Added to that the ability to create laps on the fly, makes tracking intervals etc way easier than I can imagine it would be on a phone.

For the casual cyclist I can imagine using a phone is fine though.

Personally I see the future of them just being better. Bigger/clearer edge to edge screens, live tracking that isn't a pain to set up would be good too. I imagine live segments will become more of a thing in the near future too.

I don't have a Power meter, but assuming they communicate either via ANT+ or Bluetooth, I don't see why there would be a problem? I can certainly get data from my phone - including cadence and heart rate - into Strava faster than I could get it there with my old Edge 800.

Having said that, if you've got £1k+ to splash out on a power meter, you're already in such a small subset of the cycling market that I imagine there will always be specialist add ons available.

[toohangry]

Kermit power said:

I used to use a Garmin Edge 800.

At the time you bought that, you could have used a smartphone on your handlebars too.

You didn't as:

Battery life is MUCH worse (x3 if you want to use a predetermined route)
accuracy is worse
it's not weatherproof/bikeproof
etc

I think you're just trying to justify your exit from the Garmin world!

[Kermit power]

toohangry said:

At the time you bought that, you could have used a smartphone on your handlebars too.

You didn't as:

Battery life is MUCH worse (x3 if you want to use a predetermined route)
accuracy is worse
it's not weatherproof/bikeproof
etc

I think you're just trying to justify your exit from the Garmin world!

When I bought the Garmin, you're right....

1. My phone wasn't waterproof (but then again, neither was my fking Garmin!!!)
2. The battery life was dreadful
3. Accuracy was worse - although in my experience only vertically, not horizontally.
4. It wouldn't work with ANT+ sensors

With the new setup, however...

1. The phone is waterproof, although I don't need it to be, as I keep it in my Camelbak.
2. I logged 6 hours of riding on Sunday. I used 25% of the phone's battery. There's no way I'm going to burn all the battery on a ride!
3. The new phone has a barometric altimeter, so no more problems with vertical accuracy.
4. It recognises my ANT+ cadence, speed & HR sensors with no problem.
5. I can still have a bar display with the Cateye thing I've just ordered.

The only thing I can think of which I could do on the Garmin that I can't do on the phone is get the GPS to automatically calculate wheel size for me. Other than that, it does everything I want, and it's quicker to upload to Strava at the end of it.

[toohangry]

Do you leave your phone screen on the whole time with all the metrics showing, or just log them to view later?

[Kermit power]

toohangry said:

Do you leave your phone screen on the whole time with all the metrics showing, or just log them to view later?

When I'm mountain biking, I just log in to view them later, but then that applied with the Garmin too. I might like to know that I've hit 30mph off road, but I'm certainly not going to look down at the bars to find out!

On the road yes, I like having information visible. That's why I've ordered the Cateye head unit. I can get all the information I want visible on the bars whilst the phone is in my bag, nice and protected with the screen off to preserve battery life.

[Magic919]

toohangry said:

I think you're just trying to justify your exit from the Garmin world!

This.

[Kermit power]

Magic919 said:

toohangry said:

I think you're just trying to justify your exit from the Garmin world!

This.

I suspect if you think that, you're in denial about how irrelevant modern smartphones are making other devices.

Would you think I was trying to justify my exit from the Tomtom world because I tell people how much I use Google Maps on my phone instead of having a separate Tomtom stuck to my windscreen?

Would you think I was trying to justify my exit from the MP3 player world if I told you about how I use Spotify on my mobile to listen to music?

I certainly wouldn't have bought another Garmin, you're right, but that's because I had two units fail with simple hardware issues and their customer service was appalling, but I also looked at Brtyon, Mio and a couple of others before deciding that they were a pointless waste of money.

I can even import GPX tracks and follow them with my phone if I want to, although I've yet to give it a try.

If you think I'm trying to justify leaving the Garmin world, give me a list of three (or two, or even one!) things you honestly think I'll miss. I don't have a power meter, and I can get speed, cadence, heart rate and so on displayed on the bars already....

[Magic919]

I don't think you'll miss anything.

[yellowjack]

So long as those who use their phones are happy, then they'll ditch their GPS devices. Folk like me, who still have a PAYG Nokia C1 will have to retain their GPS devices if they want to be able to record the data from their riding activities. I'm happy with what I've got, and see no real need to swap to a fancy smartphone right now. The only fly in the ointment for me is the fact that, in order to see the GPS trace and data, I have to plug my Garmin into some sort of internet capable hardware, which in my house means the desktop PC. I'm positively steam-driven, I swear!

The speculation as to the direction GPS recording will take over time is a bit of fun, though.

[Black can man]

We all know that our phones do basically the same as the Garmins, & i guess it's just down to personal choice which one you want to use.

I'm guessing the OP is still pissed that he had to pay Garmin for his damaged device to be repaired & he's still a wee bit bitter about it & is trying to convince us all that they are the bad guys.


Who cares , i have two smart phones & two Garmins, two i use to make calls & the other two go on my handlebars .

[oj113]

Well you know my opinion already Kermit, but as I've said before a lot of people like dedicated gps units on their bars (as do I) and even if you're not going for a fancy pants Garmin you can pick up basic gps enabled bike computers cheaply now.

One of your main arguments is that because you have your phone you can put it in your bag and log the ride data. That maybe fine for you, but anything that gets inbetween your phone and the GPS signal is going to degrade accuracy, obviously your phone is going to use a combination of gps and mobile signal to help establish position as best as it can but the quality of gps chips in phones is cack and even if they get better it's still not going to rival a dedicated gps device which have very sensitive waas enabled gps chips, coupled with hardware and software that is optimised for gps usage.

Another problem is that not all cyclists want to carry a big mobile with them when they're riding, road riders especially, they're not carrying bags and pocket space in lycra is at a bare minimum. Therefore a gps based bike computer is ideal, accurate with no cables, or magnets on wheels/forks.

At the end of the day for soome cyclists a smartphone is going to be fine for their data logging needs, it's horses for courses, but I really don't hold with your opinion that no-one will be using dedicated handlebar gps units within 2 years.

[upsidedownmark]

Horses for courses really; the phone battery life won't stand up half as well if you actually want to see the data on the go, and power meters aren't as rare as you might thing / are rapidly moving into commodity pricing (circa 5-700 quid depending on where you enter).

Good that you have your use case covered, and yes phones are very capable these days, but don't assume that the dedicated unit is dead, not in the medium term at least. Give it 10 years when we're all carrying far more computing power, just maybe.

[Some Gump]

I'm sure there will come a day when a phone is good at being a bike gps, but imo now is nowhere near. If you bar mount that phone with the screen on so you can use it as a display, then the battery will pagga far too quickly.

You might be ok with speed / distance, but lots of us want speed, hr, cadence etc all there during the ride..

[Kermit power]

Black can man said:

We all know that our phones do basically the same as the Garmins, & i guess it's just down to personal choice which one you want to use.

I'm guessing the OP is still pissed that he had to pay Garmin for his damaged device to be repaired & he's still a wee bit bitter about it & is trying to convince us all that they are the bad guys.


Who cares , i have two smart phones & two Garmins, two i use to make calls & the other two go on my handlebars .

I was somewhat bitter, but not since the Small Claims Court and the Sale of Goods act did its thing!

[G321]

Kermit power said:

I certainly wouldn't have bought another Garmin, you're right, but that's because I had two units fail with simple hardware issues and their customer service was appalling, but I also looked at Brtyon, Mio and a couple of others before deciding that they were a pointless waste of money.

Brytons are not a waste of money in my opinion. I've lost count of the times club mates Garmins have failed to record parts of routes or gone off track when navigating. I have a Bryton rider 40 which is very simple but does everything I need it to and it never lets me down. The only people who dismiss them are usually ones that haven't tried them

[Kermit power]

Some Gump said:

I'm sure there will come a day when a phone is good at being a bike gps, but imo now is nowhere near. If you bar mount that phone with the screen on so you can use it as a display, then the battery will pagga far too quickly.

You might be ok with speed / distance, but lots of us want speed, hr, cadence etc all there during the ride..

I've got spped, HR, cadence etc all there during the ride. That's why I spent £45 on the little Cateye head unit.

[SixPotBelly]

Kermit power said:

I've got spped, HR, cadence etc all there during the ride. That's why I spent £45 on the little Cateye head unit.

But I spent only £50 on my Bryton 20, and that gives speed, HR and cadence. No need to spend £500 on a smart phone.

I get that you like using your smart phone as a ride tracker. That's great. Tried it and it didn't work well for me so I bought the Bryton. That works well and I'm happy. It's the right tool for the job I want it to do. YMOV (Your mileage obviously varied).

[Kermit power]

SixPotBelly said:

Kermit power said:

I've got spped, HR, cadence etc all there during the ride. That's why I spent £45 on the little Cateye head unit.

But I spent only £50 on my Bryton 20, and that gives speed, HR and cadence. No need to spend £500 on a smart phone.

I get that you like using your smart phone as a ride tracker. That's great. Tried it and it didn't work well for me so I bought the Bryton. That works well and I'm happy. It's the right tool for the job I want it to do. YMOV (Your mileage obviously varied).

You got a good deal then! The cheapest I can find those anywhere now is £80+.

I didn't spend £500 on a phone, btw. I spent £280, which I would've spent anyway, even if I didn't own a bike.