What does the future hold for bike GPS?

[Kermit power]

TKF said:

Kermit power said:

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

You've got one of these on your bars


Which button do you press to get to the map page?

There's not much point having a discussion if you can't be bothered to read what I've already written, but if it makes you feel better about the size of your willy or whatever your tedious little problem is, then well done you, that unit doesn't show the map view that you get with an Edge 800, but then I never said it did, did I? I said I could do everything that I did with the 800.

If you had bothered to read the rest of the thread, you'd have seen the bit where I said I didn't use the Garmin for navigation off road because I didn't like having to look at the stty little screen and couldn't get it to do voice instructions. From personal preference, I'm far more likely to use turn by turn nav on a bike if it's in my ear rather than bouncing around on the bars on a crappy little screen.

On the road, on the other hand, I've already said I'm perfectly happy bar mounting the phone.

[Kermit power]

SixPotBelly said:

I wasn't clear. I was trying to use what's happened to home devices over the past years to illustrate what I believe will happen to portable devices over the next.

Yes, your phone can already be used to set recordings, announce your intended arrival to your boiler or alert the emergency services should you suddenly stop moving but in the near future so could your watch, or your bike computer. Component and manufacturing costs will continue to fall so there's no reason to suspect not.

I see a future with more powerful and capable dedicated devices, not just ever more powerful smart phones. Maybe the new generation of smart bike computers will be able to link with your phone for data transmission over mobile networks, but I believe they will remain capable of autonomous function as stand alone displays and ride trackers. And that's what I would want.

The challenge you face with that view is one of sheer size of customer base, I think. In 2013, there were over a Billion mobile phone handsets sold across the planet.

Of those handsets, 55% were smartphones, and of those, the vast majority of customers would effectively perceive them to be "free", both because the cost is buried in a contract, and because they would've bought a phone anyway.

Given the relative market size, I wouldn't be particularly surprised to see one of the mobile phone giants buying one of the GPS device manufacturers - maybe not Garmin but one of the smaller ones - with the specific intent of creating a combined device that does absolutely everything today's dedicated GPS devices do but do it better.

At that point, would you still want a separate device if you were having to pay £300+ for something like an Edge 1000 just to replicate functionality you've already got in your phone?

Let's come back to the thread in a couple of years and see what's happened!

[Kermit power]

TKF said:

To make some toast today I microwaved some bread and ran an iron over it. Personally I reckon the standalone toaster will be dead within a couple of years. It certainly is for me as there's nothing I could do with the Dualit which I couldn't do with this set up. What do other people think?

Oh grow up, you immature little child.

Maybe you could follow the lead of others on the thread actually contributing to an interesting discussion instead of attention whoring to make yourself feel less inadequate?

[Kermit power]

snowdude2910 said:

Kermit power said:

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???

Then I guess you've just introduced me to my next phone :-)

I'm staggered about the battery life in particular. I've currently had it off charge for 18 hours, including two hours of conference calls, various other short calls, an hour of Google Maps navigating and various bits of browsing... I've got 42% battery life left!

[Kermit power]

Mr Gear said:

Kermit power said:

This second one then failed due to water ingress past the frankly rubbish USB port cover...

Sorry if anyone mentioned this already, but I hope you didn't bin your Garmin just yet - you can fix a waterlogged USB port on these simply by spraying WD40 on it. I didn't believe it myself until I tried it. Brought my Edge 800 back from the... erm... edge.

I've already done that twice. It does resurrect it, but for less and less time between attempts.

[Kermit power]

TKF said:

Only one person spitting dummies here.

Nevertheless my contribution is to say I believe you're completely wrong in your assertion that Garmin etc. will be dead within a couple of years. What does the future hold for bike GPS? Not phones.

The Garmin etc. units will add features and become more integrated with the bikes. Bikes will have more electronic features e.g. Di2 will become more commonplace, more groupsets will include power meters, frames with built in cadence/speed sensors, tyre pressure monitors etc. Cyclists are demanding more and more from their GPS such as live tracking, automatic uploads, cycle route suggestions, training programs and coaching etc. It'll be Garmin that will follow the cycling specific trends, not phone manufacturers.

Phone batteries are still woefully inadequate as phones, let alone something sat there for 5hrs with GPS and Strava and mapping apps and bluetooth and the screen permanently on. Phones aren't robust or waterproof. You're happy with your set-up, good for you. But to extrapolate your anecdote as evidence that Garmin is done for is not clever.

There, see! You can contribute if you try!

To address some of your points...

My phone can connect to any Bluetooth or ANT+ sensor as far as I'm aware.

My Garmin was killed by water ingress. My phone is waterproof to 1.5m for half an hour. If I spend longer than that cycling under water, the state of my phone will be the last thing on my mind. I can get a rugged case for it for a tenner.

My phone already provides live tracking, automatic uploads, training plans, cycling specific route suggestions and lots more. My Garmin couldn't do most of those.

The battery life on my new phone certainly lasts far longer than I do on the bike in my pocket. Would it do so in the bars with the screen always on? I don't know, but again I've got a little lightweight portable charger I can plug into it if needed which trebles battery life, and battery technology will continue to improve.

You may be right that Garmin and co will do the development of new trends, but of people can mirror those trends on their "free" phone within months, how do Garmin make their money back? For most things, they now seem to work on open rather than proprietary standards, so don't have much patent protection.

Edited by Kermit power on Saturday 18th April 19:29