Has anyone tried the Gaia GPS on their iPhone for a GPS? The reviews are excellent, but I'm not sure if I should get this or a regular GPS. Thanks for input!!

John

I have heard good things about it, using an iPhone for a GPS works great, unless you are really looking to get seroius about it as a hobby (think thousands of campsites, tracks and misc waypoints) the cheap $2 Apps should work just fine. I have been using the MotionX GPS app in the BWCA for 5 years or so, its works flawlessly for my needs, could not ask much more of it, I think I paid $1 for the App, might be $2 now.

Ragged's right on with his assessment. I do the hobby/obsession thing, opposite end of the spectrum. Several mapping programs and data subscriptions for both handheld and auto navigation use.
One thing I do not like are folks mis-using their phones while driving even for navigation.

butthead

The battery life on a cell phone using the GPS is not good. I can get two days battery life with my Garmin.

quote Savage Voyageur: "The battery life on a cell phone using the GPS is not good. I can get two days battery life with my Garmin. "

Battery life IMO is the main drawback to using an iPhone vs. Android or dedicated GPS.

On Android, the GPS chip remains ON when you go into airplane mode, which prevents drain from constantly trying to find a cell tower.

On iPhone, the GPS chip turns OFF when you go into airplane mode, so you have to leave it fully on in order to use GPS, which in turn will lead to some drain from trying to locate a tower when in the back country. If you have a good alternate power source, this may not be an issue for you.

As far as using a phone as a backpacking GPS, I've been very happy with using Android phones with the Backcountry Navigator app.

Here's some good info on iPhone battery drain when using as a GPS by model and carrier (scroll down to battery section): iPhone as a GPS

I second the backcountry navigator app.

quote Savage Voyageur: "The battery life on a cell phone using the GPS is not good. I can get two days battery life with my Garmin. "

I can normally go an entire trip without recharging my phone, but I bring a external charging pack just in case. I'm just pretty cautious with leaving it on and running the GPS and use some of the power saving tips out there. I rarely do tracks, only when I want to do a quick pace check to see how I'm doing with current wind/wave conditions, I have no real practical need to know just where I went, I can normally remember that pretty well. I put in campsites for a trip (I find this fun) and attach any known info to the point such as comments from friends, experiences from earlier trips and of course comments from this site, other than that I use it simply for occasional spot checks when in a unfamiliar area, just to make sure I don't blow past a portage while day dreaming or accidently wonder off into a dead end bay, for this type of use it works very very well without having to spend a bunch of money and worry about yet another device. iPhone and other smart phones are really great at being the Swissarmy knife of tripping electronics, can't wait for the fishfinders to become more mainstream, already at least 2 out there that are using the phone as the main unit with just a simple external transducer.

With Verizon I can't use GPS in airplane mode to save battery. Darn!

Thank you everyone! So much to think about...