Bushwalk Australia

For my first experience using a gps for hiking I didn't want to spend much money until I was sure that it would be worth the hassle. I finished up using Osman free app on my elderly Sony phone with Open Street Mapping for NO COST. The main drawback seemed to be the 3 Gb it took up out of the 5Gb available, so the phone wasn't much good for anything else, as well as not being waterproof.
In three weeks of walking on the Pennine Way, it put us back on trail four times with minimal effort wasted. So now I'm sold on it, but none of the commercial systems seem to have a screen size or weight or ease of use equivalent to the phone. Aging eyes mean that 8 point font is almost beyond me nowadays.
Am I missing something?

G'day,
I've used OSM (free) for about 4 years with the contours and hillshades(paid-small fee for what you get). On a sony Z2 now I have a samsung S7.
The pictorial presentation is excellent, I won't change unless I go more off track. Even then I would want to see another system up close before I changed. I leave it on Airplane mode when in constant use. Chews about 2-3% per hour maybe? GPS (standalone) units offer poor pictorial representation. Of course constant use over days would necessitate a power bank. If on a track I turn it off and only check to see where I am. Phone will last for 3-5 days that way.
Have you seen this viewtopic.php?f=21&t=27060
You do use it off the satellites don't you-- not data!
S7 is water repellant and dust proofish and I put it in a zip lock bag -perfect!

Plus others will chime in with their favourites and more advanced models.

Thanks Lamont, Sony Experia, No data, I didn't open a UK account, so I just ran direct from the satellite.

digbyg wrote:For my first experience using a gps for hiking I didn't want to spend much money until I was sure that it would be worth the hassle. I finished up using Osman free app

Is "Osman" actually OSMand? If so set your text size to suit .. normally set to 100% .. but you can go 200%.

Left menu soft button .. configure map .. text size.

You can use OSMand and some others without any connection what so ever .. no cell phone (airplane mode), no GPS .. just the map. You use it like a paper map- pan around - zoom in/out. Only when you want to know where you are .. then you can turn on the connections - GPS for satellite derived location and/or cell phone for cell phone tower derived location. You do have to download the maps before you want them ... I do this using a Wifi connection at home. All of Oz is less than 1 Gb. 5 Gb would be a lot of data ...

I use a Samsung miniS4 with a microSD card. The key here is that micro SD card .. I have a 64Gb card .. not running out of memory anytime soon. So if you are in the market for a new phone .. make certain you can plug in a memory card. And yes the OSMand maps can go on the card.

I'm using a Samsung A7 which is waterproof, has a large and bright screen, and has a larger-than-average battery. It's great for running OsmAnd or OruxMaps when bushwalking.

You can download maps based on OpenStreetMap data for offline use. In many areas, OpenStreetMap's depiction of paths is better than on government maps. Contours are free with OruxMaps, and there's an inexpensive Contour plugin for OsmAnd. However, these are 20m contours and not very precise.

With these maps you can also cache government topo maps for offline use. In general, the topo maps have better contours and better representation of clifflines. But the great thing about OpenStreetMap data is that users can update it. I find it very satisfying after a walk to edit OpenStreetMap to add clifflines and other useful details. After a day or so, the edits appear on the OpenStreetMap website, and after a while they make it into the data used by OruxMaps and OsmAnd.

OsmAnd and OruxMaps are big, complex apps with zillions of options. To me that's their main downside - it takes a long time to get the hang of them. But, having done that, I have no desire to use a dedicated GPS.

Thanks Ribuck, Thats where I am at the moment. Happy using the phone and OSM but wanting a good reason to use a dedicated system.