iOs & iOs Apps (inc iPhone, iPad, iPod, iBrick)

looks good, but how does it perform re. battery life? If it's continuously transmitting data, wouldn't that sap the iphone's batt pretty quickly?

Great, I was looking for something like this for the iphone....I'll give it a try

It does use a lot of battery life (Iabout 10% - 15% of batterylife for each hour the app is in use). It works well though.

i've had this sitting on my phone for a few weeks now but havent got round to using it, will try it out on my way home and see what its like.

it is apparently very battery hungry...

Jaygee and VeeVee have used it quite a bit and have said that its a battery destroyer

Battery life is the iPhone's achilles heel.

Battery life is the iPhone's achilles heel.

http://www.iphonealley.com/news/external-battery-for-iphone-adds-hours-to-talk-time

Nice one Tommy. But you don't find such add ons for any other mobile phone, hence my comment above.

It's been a pretty typical day of usage for me- some phone conversations, some texts and a lot of emails, and my iPhone is almost completely out of battery.

I'd think that this application would flatten the battery before you finished a ride if it was of a decent distance.

I use it.

Works well.

Kills battery to death.

A better application is Flightcontrol where you have to play flight controller and land planes. Dont even have to leave the house.

yeah the iPhone doesn't store maps locally so it's constantly downloading map info as well as pulling a GPS signal. so you've got a couple of radios cranking along at once, which does murder your battery life.

someone needs to hook up a dynamo system to charge your iphone while you ride.

edit: something like this perhaps ;) http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/motorolas_bike.php

Or, as a radical alternative, Apple could look to improve their power management. ;p

Good point andy.

I've been very tempted by gps and have done some research you can get a garmin etrex vista hcx for about £150, or the legend for £130, no altimeter, (very popular with cyclist by all my internet searching), "acquire" some maps and you are good to go. Seems like a better and more robust (waterproof bike mount, decent battery life e.t.c) solution.

I have seen Flight Control turn intelligent computer game loathing people into zombies - it is worse than crack!

Good point andy.

I've been very tempted by gps and have done some research you can get a garmin etrex vista hcx for about £150, or the legend for £130, no altimeter, (very popular with cyclist by all my internet searching), "acquire" some maps and you are good to go. Seems like a better and more robust (waterproof bike mount, decent battery life e.t.c) solution.

Ideally I'd like a Garmin Edge 705 but that's quite pricey. I'm just thinking the iPhone app would work well as an interim solution instead of buying a cheaper GPS.

+1 on this thread.. I use my iphones normal gps all the time, generally i know what i'm going & what direction places are Then using the iphone gps to finetune where i am going when i'm close by.

I use Run Keeper on mine and it works admirably on the bike (though the Pro version is 6 quid now), it doesn't seem to cane the battery toooo much either... Word Scramble on the other hand absolutely kills it because I can NEVER put it down

I don't use the gps on the iPhone. As mentioned it just kills the battery. I got a garmin 605 with map of Europe and used it properly this week riding in Suffolk. I mapped some of the rides in mapmyride (brilliant mapping tool) and put them into the garmin. The garmin crashes a few times mind but you just switch it off and restart and it is fine. I guess a pain if you want to monitor your performance but the miles you have done are still there. Apparently I have the older software so an upgrade will hopefully fix it. It is a pleasure not to have to read maps every so often. Yesterday we did a 115k ride with it and it took us on really nice roads. The battery life is 13 hours. It is great for walking too.

The iphone is great so go for it anyway :)

Ideally I'd like a Garmin Edge 705 but that's quite pricey. I'm just thinking the iPhone app would work well as an interim solution instead of buying a cheaper GPS.

google says £236 cheapest for 705. Personally that seems like a lot of extra money to find out you cadence and heart rate, but I suppose it depends how important that data is to you.

tommy are the garmin you mention navigators? The maps are quite expensive and the colour screen makes a difference. The 605 I got from wiggle came with Europe road maps. I think I paid £250.

Yep both navigators. The vista has a built in altimeter, the legend just uses gps to find height so less accurate and £20 less. They are both navigators, like the 705 and 605 come with a base maps but you need to buy or "acquire" maps to use them fully. You can plan routes at home on a computer or be out and say I want to get to xxx and I am a bike / car / walker.

HCX is the model type. I am not sure what the H means, I think it might be to do with the chip set type high accuracy, C means colour screen and X mean expandable, i.e you can plug in sd card to expand the memory.

The only difference with I can find with the 605 / 705 is the heart rate / power meter / cadence e.t.c Which to me has no interest but if you're interested in that extra information then I guess it's worth the extra money. I have not bought one but after my research either the legend or vista would be one of the ones I would buy.

• Search your iPhone
  
• Cut, copy, and paste
  
• Send photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS*
  
• Read and compose email and text messages in landscape
  
  

well finally! as long they don't make us pay for it, I'm happy as larry.

i want to be able to search contacts by date, so i can remember where i met people

Playing is most fun on approach to an airport. Currently I'm stuck in the 70's.

YouTube - Firemint Flight Control for iPhone and iPod Touch

There's a last fm app!!! Bloody brilliant :-)