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AZHUNTER05

Anyone use a good gps smart phone app?

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The GPS signals are not part of the app and rely on either cellular triangulation or the GPS chip in your phone it will toggle automatically to what is available. I used mine with an XGPS receiver that links via Bluetooth to my phone and it is a better signal than my Garmin on my cached maps. Garmin has a new unit that does the same thing for ~$80 and is a newer chip with higher freq which I am thinking about getting as well. One for the rzr and one for the backpack.

 

I pretty much go between motion X and Trimble as of this year. The real beauty of Trimble is the trip planning and ease of importing things like POI info from google earth.

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Locus Pro

 

is hands down the best GPS app I have ever used and I do GIS/GPS for a living.

 

For $5 or so, the "Pro" version can pre-download maps for offline use, all points can be imported and exported in various file formats through your computer or someone elses GPS unit. You get free access to the ESRI suite of basemaps, some of the best in the business. As well as other popular basemaps such as MyTopo, Google, Bing, Yahoo, Mapquest, and several others.

 

I have not used a traditional GPS unit in 4 years, not for a single waypoint. I still carry it on occasion as a phone battery is not as reliable as I wish it was. But I keep a full charge on my phone before I go out and then put it in airplane mode without the wifi and other crap enabled.

 

I cannot speak on behalf of the backcoutry app but I'm sure it is good, too. If anyone has any questions with Locus Pro I'd be happy to answer.

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Backcountry Navigator is what I use. Lots of awesome features.

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Locus Pro is really powerful for tracking and navigating but weak on its choice of topo base layers and not real user friendly. Backcountry Navigator is really powerful in terms of your choice of topo base layers, even having the most up to date Forest Service maps. The problem with with Backcountry Pro I think is they try to nickle and dime you to death when adding GMU's or landownership. Another cool free app is the PDF Maps in which you can download a lot of free USGS topos, they have a bunch of maps to buy to but they are pretty cheap. I use Locus Pro and PDF Maps both. With PDF Maps Its real easy to upload your points and tracks to google earth or make points in google earth and download to your phone. For my phone I bought a 20 dollar charger that takes AA batteries and had no problems running out of juice on 3 and 4 day backcountry trips.

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Just downloaded this app can't wait to use it.

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