This topic contains 19 replies, has 15 voices, and was last updated by 
uws22 15 years, 5 months ago.
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Has anyone used their smart phone to replace their gps? I’ve heard that this is possible. I just upgraded my cell phone and wondered if I might be able to find caches if I get stuck in an area without caches downloaded.
I’ve used my Blackberry a couple of times and had some luck with it, and other times been way off. It works pretty decent especially when I have the caches already stored in the memory and can just pull up the nearest. I am pondering buying an unzipping program that will let me unzip pocket queries so that I can travel and cache on the fly.
All in all, I wouldn’t dump my gps, but when out and have time to kill the phone works.
I do use the Geocache Navigator by Trimble on my BlackBerry. I find it is pretty good getting you close but can have difficulty with accuracy so the handheld is still the primary unit used to get to the cache. the BB is good if you have good signal lock and pretty good if GZ has a good beacon to search. sometimes, the coords are right on and other times not so good.
Disclaimer : Always answering to a higher power.
I use my iphone on occasion, gps is ok but not as good as my 60 series, logging is VERY nice with the gc.com app. I know one cache team up here only uses their black berry and they seem to be doing ok.
I just got a Motorola Droid. Does anyone else have one of these? I’m still learning how to use it and haven’t even figured out if there is a geocaching app for it yet.
@kc9gbo wrote:
I’ve used my Blackberry a couple of times and had some luck with it, and other times been way off. It works pretty decent especially when I have the caches already stored in the memory and can just pull up the nearest. I am pondering buying an unzipping program that will let me unzip pocket queries so that I can travel and cache on the fly.
All in all, I wouldn’t dump my gps, but when out and have time to kill the phone works.
There is an option in the pq generation to not send them as a zip file, thats what i do on my blackberry.
Now that you mention that, I recall seeing that!! Awesome, thanks for the reminder!!
Where is that thumbs up approval button on this site??The highest rated apps for droid are Geobeagle (free) and Cachemate ($10). I’d suggest you download one and try it. Remember that the antennas in phones are designed for automotive use and will not work well in cover.
We have used GeoScout on our phone.
Its nice because you can load caches from your given position, which has come in handy for us. We have used it when use “plan a route” and we go off our route a little. It will give you the closest ones to you. It will give you a version of a pocket query. You can get the closest 100 caches to where you are.
We have also logged a couple caches using this program. We still like taking the time to write logs so we don’t do that much.
Any additional questions feel free to contact us. And we would always love to hear from you 🙂
P.S. Just remember we’re really bad at looking at messages on here. Go through geocaching website so we get an email. Good Luck!!
@elfdoctors wrote:
I just got a Motorola Droid. Does anyone else have one of these? I’m still learning how to use it and haven’t even figured out if there is a geocaching app for it yet.
I have the Droid also. Go into the market and search geocaching. There will be several free and paid apps for caching. I have downloaded geobeagle but have not had a chance to use it.
I am waiting until Monday for my Droid….but my daughter, slygirl21, has one. We first tried geobeagle, but that wasn’t so great. This weekend we downloaded CacheMate, and that was awesome. So, that is the first thing I will put on my Droid. It was $8.
Scaffdogs uses a iphone for caching contact them if you have some questions
@manparuby wrote:
I am waiting until Monday for my Droid….but my daughter, slygirl21, has one. We first tried geobeagle, but that wasn’t so great. This weekend we downloaded CacheMate, and that was awesome. So, that is the first thing I will put on my Droid. It was $8.
C:geo is great for the droid. It is somewhat controversial because it uses the geocaching web site and they don’t like it because it violates some sort of agreement. But C:geo is baseed out of Russia or something like that but they cant do anything about it because it is not in the USA. It is free and I highly recomend it.
I’ve learned a bit more about how these phone GPSs work. IF you have a good GPS signal (the antenna are not so great), you can get decent 30 foot accuracy. The problem is that you will lose signal, at which time the phone will determine your location by either cell tower triangulation (not terrible, probably +/- 150 feet) or the network street address of any WI-FI networks the phone can pick up. Note that you don’t have to be logged into the WIFI for the WIFI method to be used. The accuracy of the WIFI method is basically random, as it depends on how accurately the address was geocoded and, more importantly, whether the address assigned to the network is actually where the network is located. If your phone suddenly thinks you are 20 miles away, you are being located using a nonlocal WIFI. If your location on the GPS seems to be “jumping” as you move, it is probably using cell tower triangulation.
There’s an official android application that’s supposed to be coming out soon that I’m anxiously awaiting. I’ve been using my HTC Hero with c:geo and geobeagle installed on it. If I’m in a good service area I prefer to use c:geo cause it works so slick.
Overall I’ve been happy with the accuracy of my phone, but when I can spare the cash I’ll be getting an oregon 450. I’ve already had too many close calls with dropping my phone and have gotten pine sap all over it. I would like to have something I can be a little “rougher” with.
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