I use a Garmin 650, a Garmin GPSmap62s, and an iPhone. I had 4 other “varmints” before those. I use the iPhone a LOT except in the woods. I have numerous observations that haven’t yet been mentioned (I think).
1. Although a handheld GPSr is potentially more accurate than a smartphone (my favorite being the 62s), I have found that an iPhone is just as accurate if not in a wooded area. The trees throw off the reception on an iPhone and it’s still doable but jumps around a bit more.
2. I would never hide a cache using a smartphone for the coordinates since it cannot perform “waypoint averaging” the way modern handheld GPSr’s can.
3. Smartphones have some huge advantages over handhelds. One of the major advantages is the satellite view. If looking for a cache you could switch to satellite view and see (for example) that it is located in the 3rd tree from the driveway.
4. You can real ALL logs on a smartphone, not just the 5 most recent.
5. You can not only view the topo map, satellite view, and street map on smartphones, you can view many park trail maps that don’t show up on a traditional street map. Most cachers that have iPhones probably aren’t aware that they even have this feature. Just switch to the trail map and >poof< you can see the trail and how far off the trail the cache is located.
6. You can log your finds, DNF’s, and notes in the field from your smartphone. I usually do this immediately if it’s a FTF. More often I log a field note from my smartphone, which is immediately sent to geocaching.com with the correct time stamp, and I can log online when I get home and the field note is already uploaded for me.
7. You can view all of the photos in a cache’s gallery from a smartphone; handy when you’re stuck and looking for additional hints.
8. A smartphone can also be used as a flashlight, a camera, a calculator, a watch, and a bird or plant encyclopedia.
9. There are apps available for smartphones that decrypt many ciphers.
10. You can solve many stages of puzzles from the field using a smartphone with a data plan. A new one just came out this week near me in which some had to abort because they didn’t have access to the info needed in the field. They need to go back with a friend that has a smartphone.
11. Smartphones need to have an active connection with a cell phone tower to receive the information. However, you can save targeted caches on your phone (logs, coordinates, maps, photos, the whole cache page) ahead of time in case you’re in an area with bad cellular coverage. But then you have to plan ahead, like you would with a traditional old school GPSr. If you save the page ahead of time to your smartphone, the GPS chip will still work with GPS satellites even though there is no cell phone reception, and you won’t have to rely on a cellular connection to see the map, etc. because you saved it to your phone.
12. You can view a trackable’s mission and history from a smartphone if you encounter some in the field.
13. While in the field you can sort the nearby caches by distance from your current location, favorite points, title, GC code, or type.
14. If spontaneously hiding a cache you can see where all of the current caches are located, both found and unfound, in case there are proximity issues.
15. If searching for caches spontaneously you can filter out “found” caches without running a pocket query.
16. You always have the most recent maps and logs available without having to update anything, ever.
17. The display is bright high resolution with brilliant color, and is great for explaining geocaching to muggles and showing them how many caches are in an area.
18. This is repeating myself from point #1, but a smartphone IS accurate if power lines and trees aren’t interfering, and when you consider the satellite map view it can be way more useful than the coordinates themselves.
19. It can be used for PAF situations.
20. Finally, and this has been mentioned by others before me, the most useful, best advantage of using a smartphone for caching: spontaneous caching. You could be anywhere: in another town, in another state, wherever, and on a whim you could see if there’s a cache nearby. Or miles away. You can see what is near, and see the most recent logs, and navigate to the cache with the most recent maps, without having to update the unit or load any pocket queries.
Although I still prefer an old school handheld GPSr for caching, a smartphone, for me, compliments my Garmin and in many cases replaces it when out in the field.
I was told I get paid by the word; kindly submit payment to my account please and many thanks. 8)
