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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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....

[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!

[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.

[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.

[Kermit power]

Pot Odds said:

I've used all of the Garmin Edge range (having started out using my mobile with Strava) and have to say i'm a big fan.

The OP does however raise an interesting question as the 1st thing I thought when I got hands on with the Edge 1000 was how like a mobile phone it was and wouldn't it be good if I could make calls / texts etc on it.

If Garmin were to give the Edge 1000 mobile phone capabilities that would be an interesting proposition (provided the phone wasn't too compromised).

If phones are to succeed in replacing bespoke cycle GPS units then I think their use as a cycle GPS will need to feature highly as a design consideration - much more so than ATM. I also think a bespoke mounting system is essential as after market phone mounts all seem a bit gash IMO (I would have no issue with a 1/4 turn mount on the back of a Garmin Edge Mobile).

For me, the fly in the ointment for your particular setup (which I accept works for you) would be the inability to have turn by turn navigation on my bars without a clunky mount.

I don't think the cycle GPS is in danger anytime soon and it certainly doesn't appear to be dissuading any of the new entrants into the market.

Edited by Pot Odds on Wednesday 15th April 22:43

You make a fair point about turn by turn navigation, although I never much liked it on the 800, despite shelling out for the OS maps of the UK, (anyone want to buy the whole UK in 1:25000 on a micro SD card? ) as I found the screen too small to really make much use of when off road. It was OK on road though.

My plan for the new setup is to try downloading a GPX file of Pitch Hill and Winterfold (an area of the Surrey Hills I don't know at all well) and then using bluetooth headphones to try riding the trails with turn by turn voice navigation, as I was never keen on the idea of trying to look down at the Edge when it beeped at me whilst I'm riding off road anyway!

[Kermit power]

bakerstreet said:

The phone battery maybe good now, but we all know that smart phone batteries deteriorate with use, so it will reach a point when it will drain the battery in 2 hours flat.

I'm sure it will, but the last phone I had with this sort of battery life, even when new, didn't even have a camera or internet access!

I took it off charge at 06:30 this morning, and nearly 17 hours of moderate use later, I've still got 59% battery life.

When it eventually does start to shorten, I've got a tiny little external battery pack which will give it a complete extra charge...

[Kermit power]

sjg said:

The problem with phones is the big bright screen sucking away the battery if you want it on all the time. None of the little paired headunits I've seen have a solution for showing directions if you're following a route, which is how I use my Garmin a lot of the time. They're probably fine if you're just wanting numbers as you plod around the same old training route but the best thing about GPS devices for me is plotting out an interesting route on new roads then riding it without getting lost.

I'd agree, but I rarely used my Garmin for navigating off road, as it was always pretty rubbish at identifying the right place to turn down a trail! Fine on roads, but poor away from them.

Even on roads, however, I only ever used the on screen navigation because it didn't have voice navigation. I'm interested to see how that works out with the phone and Bluetooth headphones.

[Kermit power]

snowdude2910 said:

It sounds like your phone is well cut out for it but I like android and my phones gps is better than an iphone but not as good as my garmin with speeds varying wildly on the phone and the battery is st with the gps on. Sounds like you have a good solution if you want a windows phone but I don't particularly I stick to what I know and it's nice that I never have to worry about my garmin being charged or it running out of charge as it lasts forever I just get on the bike turn it on and go. With my phone I couldn't do that, I'll be upgrading to a 910xt soon though to save me keep counting and loosing count of lengths when swimming that alone is worth the £300 for me.

My phone is Android???

[Kermit power]

SixPotBelly said:

Just looked up the invoice in case I had misremembered. It cost EUR60 + EUR6 shipping from Bike24 in November last year. = GBP47 at today's rate. And it came with HRM strap and cadence sensor included.

If one doesn't need navigation, it's got to be a better way to go than spending the same on a Cateye remote disply and having to use a smart phone on top.

Edit - Just had a look and they no longer stock the package including the sensors, but they do have the unit itself for EUR45 (=GBP32). Cheap ANT+ sensors can be bought from Decathlon or elsewhere, and presumably you needed to buy sensors for your smart phone solution as well.

The sensors are neither here nor there, since as you say both solutions need them, although at that price, it would've been cheaper to buy the Bryton then throw it away than it would've been to buy separate HRM and Cadence sensor!!

As to not needing navigation, it's nice to know I've got it if I ever do need it, and I'd always take my phone with me - two big offs over the years are enough to ensure that, although sod's law says if I did it again I'd be out of mobile coverage! - so it's not like I'm having to carry anything extra. In fact, when I'm mountain biking, I can carry less, because I have no need for the stats on the bars, but still want to record my ride.

[Kermit power]

toohangry said:

You don't have nav in front of you, your phone doesn't supply metrics in front of you and so you've bought an additional device to supply half of that.

You're just comparing apples with oranges. It's analogous to saying that a TomTom and an iphone will make built in Satnav and entertainment systems redundant - yes they are a reasonable alternative but they're heavily compromised. Like your new solution

I have both nav and metrics in front of me if I want them. I don't particularly want the nav in front of me. What I also have, though, which I didn't have with the Garmin, is the option of having the nav in my ear which, particularly for mountain biking when I'm concentrating on looking as far down the trail as I can, has to be the better option.

I'm not particularly bothered about having the data in front of me when I'm riding either. I only ordered the Cateye out of interest to see how it works as a result of this thread. I shall let you know...

[Kermit power]

Usget said:

I think that Smartphones will increasingly become the hub for almost everything. It doesn't make sense to carry a laptop with a load of processing power, that you then waste on MS Office, when you could use the perfectly adequate processor and memory in your phone, which would sync wirelessly with a screen and keyboard. This is what they were trying to do with Ubuntu for Android, although it seems to have died a death.

So it makes logical sense that the thing on your bars will become simply a display for data which is collated and processed elsewhere. Until I read this thread, I had no idea that such a thing existed, but to me, it makes sense, so long as the questions about GPS accuracy and battery life are addressed.

OP, I'd be interested to see a side-by-side gpx plot of the same ride, taken on your Z2 and taken on a Garmin, so that we could see how accurate the Z2 really is.

Nice to see someone actually happy to have a discussion, rather than being too hangry, or whatever his name is!

I'll see if I can find a way to get a track off my Edge 800, as at present, the reason I've binned it is that a little bit of water got under the USB charging port cover and as a result it is no longer recognised by my PC or laptop.

Someone suggested getting it to save tracks to the SD card rather than the phone memory, so if I can get it to do this without having to first plug it into the PC, then I'll have a try at recording side by side and post up the results.

[Kermit power]

PeteB0 said:

Kermit power said:

Nice to see someone actually happy to have a discussion, rather than being too hangry, or whatever his name is!

Does having a different view on the subject nullify our contribution to the 'discussion'

Not at all, but hangry doesn't seem able to cope with the "future" part of the thread title.

Two years ago, what I can do now would've been pretty much impossible. The rate of mobile development has hugely outstripped that of dedicated GPS bike devices over that time - hardly surprising given the relative market sizes - so God only knows what phones will be able to do in two years from now, and two years beyond that.

For whatever reason, though, hangry and some others don't seen willing or able to consider that.

[Kermit power]

TKF said:

Some Gump said:

So is the summary that:

OP makes a purchasing decision to suit him, asks "why does everyone else not do that?"
Several other PHers say "it doesn't suit me, so i did different"
OP responds with "you're doing it wrong". ?

It is absurd, especially as he's also had to buy an extra Cateye to see the data. Rather than have to buy 2 things to take on the bike he's had to buy 2 things to take on the bike and everyone else is wrong.

I've spent £45, and I can do anything I did previously with my Edge 800.

Alternatively, I could've spent £250+ on an Edge 810, Bryton Rider 60 or similar.

I'd say the price differential alone (unless you're suggesting you would've bought a GPS unit instead of a phone?) makes the discussion worth having, and that's before considering the relative pace of development of phones and GPS devices.

I reckon the next step is going to be one of the major phone manufacturers picking up on this concept and really developing it as a lifestyle device. OK, at the moment it's on an old version of Android and it's a bit stunted as a phone, but it has huge potential as a mapping device, and it's already got the bounceability needed to make people feel comfortable about bar mounting it. The likes of Samsung already seem to be starting to go that way with phones like the S5 Active and S5 Sport (which I don't think we have in the UK?), so why are so many people unwilling to contemplate the sort of improvements that will come along in the next couple of years?

Also worth considering is the need for phone manufacturers to find new ways to persuade you to update with their newest products. Moore's law seems to be tailing off somewhat for phones, and the increases in raw processing power between one generation to the next are dropping. The latest screens are also beyond the level of resolution anyone is going to need (4K on a device 5" across!), so I reckon the developments will increasingly be in lifestyle modeling.

Add then the fact that if I decide I dont' like the mapping software, or the training capabilities or any other element of my phone, I can just choose another app, whereas on a dedicated device, I'm stuck with what the manufacturer ships me, and the potential for the phone over the dedicated device just increases further.

I've never said that a phone instead of the GPS device is the right choice for everyone right now, or even for the majority, just because it is for me. I do, however, think that if phones and dedicated GPS devices both continue to develop at the current pace, then within a couple of years - maybe five at most - the GPS device will be a thing of the past. It will have been replaced by an "iPhone Outdoors" or something which will have everything a phone already does, coupled with upgraded battery and GPS performance and rugged chassis, at a premium over the standard iPhone, but much less of a premium than buying a standard iPhone and an Edge 1200 or whatever they're up to by then.

This thread was never designed to be about now. I'm only illustrating what I can do now compared to two years ago to try and start a conversation around what might be possible two years from now. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp?

[Kermit power]

I agree with you on the watch, but then I'm 44, so I had a watch for years before I had a phone. Go and look at the teenagers of today, and very few have them.

Ultimately, I reckon wearable tech will just get better and better in conjunction with your phone, so you'll still be able to have the best of all worlds, but just one compute unit to drive it all.

For browsing and the like, if I wanted to, I could get a Google Chromecast and plug it into my TV, and a bluetooth keyboard for my phone. I could then start typing a document on my phone on the train on the way home, then pick up seamlessly with a full-sized keyboard and 50" monitor when I get home. At the moment, I don't want to, as I've got a laptop, PC and iPad, and phones aren't yet powerful enough to do things like full on photo processing, but how long is it going to be before we get there? My phone is already a lot more powerful than the first few laptops I had.

Look at early efforts with things like Google Glass. How long do you think it's going to be before your phone will be able to project speed, cadence, HR and turn by turn directions into a heads up display so that you never have to look down at the bars?

Equally, I was reading something recently (and I don't think it was an April Fool!!) which was talking about using accelerometers and GPS in your phone to identify a possible bike crash and then automatically send a text to an emergency contact with your location of you don't respond to your phone within a certain time.

Of course GPS devices will continue to develop as well, but we've already got more mobile phones than we do people in this country. How many people have dedicated GPS devices? The gulf in relative development resources is immense,even taking into account the need for phone developers to develop a much wider range of capabilities.

[Kermit power]

SixPotBelly said:

I think you're probably right about the teenagers, and equally there's probably quite a strong correlation between age and disposition to dedicated devices. I'm 47, and though I feel fifteen years younger, I clearly don't behave fifteen years younger when it comes to tech.

The issue I have with such 'wearable tech' is if none of it functions without your phone. If a dedicated device is the same size and cost (as in my Bryton 20 vs Cateye remote example) then I son't see the benefit in complicating things. Strangely I consider myself an early adopter, but I don't adopt tech for tech's sake.

Nor do I buy into the central processing device model. Look at home computing. Twenty years ago I had one PC for everything I wanted to do. Now, as technology had progressed and processor prices have come down, I don't know off-hand how many I have. There's the desktop PC I'm writing this on, the old one in the garage for car diagnostics, there's a tiny one attached behind the TV controlling my video media library, there's another acting as a home server, there's the laptop I'd take if working abroad for a month, a netbook if they're sending me only for a weekend, an ipad if it's a day return, the one built into the car dash and the smart phone, plus probably more I've forgotten. Instead of (or as well as) a future where ancillary devices depend on a mother host, why not a future where the devices remain autonomous but gain greater computing power of their own?

To clarify, I don't see the phone becoming the central computing unit in the home, but I do see it becoming increasingly integrated into it, so that I can effectively take my home computing power with me. I can already use my phone to set programmes to record remotely on my Youview box, for example, and if I wanted to, I could buy a thermostat which would recognise - thanks to my phone - when I'm getting close to the house and turn the heating on accordingly.

SixPotBelly said:

As an aside, I'd like to mention that I've enjoyed this debate. You write well and you've been nothing but polite to all throughout. Not an 'insane' thread at all. And, though it might weaken my argument to admit it, I have re-downloaded the Strava app to my phone and will give it another go on a short run (battery life worries) to keep an open mind.

Why thank you!

[Kermit power]

neilbauer said:

But on a long ride 4-5 hours using Bluetooth to link your devices does the battery last???

I don't know about Bluetooth yet, but 6 hours last Sunday logging my ride and my hear rate through ANT+ used up about 25% of my battery life.

I'll let you know after I've tried the Bluetooth head unit, which is currently sat at home awaiting my return.