So why do people still buy dedicated handheld units? It’s simple. There are a few critical issues with smartphones:

• GPS antenna / chipset does not provide as good and accurate positioning
• Non-rugged hardware means the units can damage easily
• Non-waterproof hardware
• Battery life is poor

Garmin are about to release the Android based Monterra to bridge this gap, but what does it really bring to the party. The items on my list are simple hardware issues. Phone manufactures won’t address these issues because they add cost, are not mainstream requirements and may make their devices considerably larger and therefore less desirable. GPSr users are used to carrying around large clunky devices, so getting around power issues (and Android really does guzzle power) is easily solved by adding a large housing that takes three AA batteries or a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Garmin claim 22hrs on the rechargeable battery, but we all know to take these specifications with a pinch of salt. Sadly, what Garmin have done is to remove many of the benefits of an Android phone. There is no phone, no data (3G/4G). So we now need to carry a separate phone and we can’t interact with the data that is so central to geocaching whilst outdoors. Wi-fi is still available, but that’s not much use if like me you are generally out on the hills. While the device can record 1080p video (I don’t know how good it is though) it can only display a paltry 272 x 480 pixels. That means the HTC One has 16 times more detail on the screen. I believe this is part of the power saving exercise.

The Google Play Store is available on the device, and this could be Garmin’s downfall IMHO. Sure, if it wasn’t available some users would soon find a way around that, but by opening up the Play Store you can put any Android app on you want. This also means that the Garmin software becomes pretty much redundant (there are always people prepared to write this stuff for free and it’s usually better that the bundled software) and more importantly they will no longer get revenue from selling maps. It’s good news for the user. Personally I hate that if I buy a Garmin device I am tied down to some pretty poor maps and at a large cost. Now you can just install your favourite Android mapping application and associated off-line maps. If you don’t have a better Android (or other smartphone) device you could also install an offline sat nav app, though these are not free of course. WhereYouGo (the Android replacement for Wherigo), Munzee and a host of other GPS related apps could also be installed.

All it takes is for an electronics giant to see a profit and they will make an rugged Android phone with a good antenna/chipset and a large battery option and it’s bye-bye Garmin. No expensive software development or support is required. While they’re at it they will add in the phone and data connectivity and Garmin’s effort will be kicked into touch. The arguement for no phone appears to be battery conservation, but turning the phone (and data) on/off  on Android couldn’t be any easier. The final nail in the coffin is the cost. The Monterra is retailing for a whopping £600 (minus 1p). This comes with the totally useless base map and the only slightly more useful recreational map of Europe. There are also no details on Android version, processor, RAM, how speakers deal with being IPX-7 waterproof etc.

Of course dedicated GPS receivers also come with 3-axis compasses, barometric altimeters and the Monterra even has a UV meter (though it didn’t work in the review I saw), but these are much less important. Personally I’ve never seen much difference in practical terms between the 2-axis and 3-axis compass and all barometric altimeters on these devices are pretty much useless (and they drink batteries).

The release date has been put back several times now, but I’m sure that Garmin will make sure it’s out in time for Christmas regardless of whether it works or not. Garmin have a poor record in recent years when it comes to releasing new products as they have been full of bugs, but unlike Magellan they do at least address the issues and try to fix them. Santa can relax though, because I won’t be asking for a Monterra this Christmas.

Starting out

One morning I woke up with an idea. Wouldn’t it be great to have a web application that allowed me and other walkers/hikers to plan routes. mapRoute was born. There are a few similar apps, but they are all pretty limited. I wanted better mapping (UK Ordnance Survey 1:25K), ability to create and edit routes easily, then store them on the server and download them at will so I can load them onto my GPS receiver. As the project progressed my requirements grew and grew, but this was the starting point. The project is about to go live, so I thought I would share the experience over the next few posts.

At the start I had to do some reading and quickly discovered that my minimum requirements would be an understanding of the following:

HTML

A few years ago this was all most web sites had. It’s just a markup language that allows you to create a simply formatted document on the web. I’d used this for years and there’s really not much to it. You can’t create a web app with HTML, but you do need it as a starting point. HTML5 is now available, which provides much more functionality than past versions.

JavaScript

This scripting language runs in your browser and brings a web app to life. JavaScript can interface to databases APIs, variable data and the Document Object Model (DOM), which is really the HTML. I knew a tiny bit of JavaScript, but I would have to learn much more. This was to be my steepest learning curve. Fortunately I saw my brother-in-law the weekend I started and he gave me a recent JavaScript book thick enough to club a bunch of 70′s DJs to death.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets allow you to format web pages while separating formatting from content. You can do much more than you’d think with it, so it was important that I got to grips with CSS quickly.

AJAX

Ajax is cool. It allows you to communicate with a data source (database, API, web site) without reloading the page. Remember how you used to fill out a form, press submit and the page would re-load. This was the only way to pass data. Now think of when you type something into the Google search engine. After each character the page shows matches with what you’ve typed so far. Ever wondered how it does this? It’s Ajax. Each time a key is pressed Ajax sends the string back to the server, which returns a set of results… all without a submit key or a page re-load. The search button is now superfluous on that page. Another example relevant to my project is Bing maps. As you move the map more tiles automatically load. It’s not magic, it’s Ajax.

PHP

(PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a pretty straightforward server-side language. All of my Ajax calls PHP code. The PHP code makes database calls, gets elevation data or makes calls to APIs. I needed to write some proxy code to allow calls to be make to external domains. As session variables are server-side I also use PHP to deal with these. When I started this site I originally used Perl as my server-side language. Personally I find PHP is much easier and have converted all Perl to PHP on this site now too.

mySQL

This is an open source database manager that is supported by many web hosts, including mine. As I am a SQL Server DBA, this should be a piece of cake for me. At last, an easy bit.

JSON

I am very familiar with XML due to my job, but all GPS users should know some xml, as gpx files are really XML data. It’s a method of representing data in text form, so it’s ideal for passing between applications. JSON is a lightweight and simple substitute for XML. It tends to be more popular for API and web services. It is pretty straight forward to pick up.

APIs and other stuff

Bing Maps 7.0 was chosen because of it’s ability to provide 1:25K OS maps, something that the Ordnance Survey themselves couldn’t do. Geocaching Live API was used to provide calls directly into the geocaching database, currently holding over 2M active geocaches worldwide (150K in UK alone).

There would also be various libraries to provide graphs, date entry and even a little jQuery to enhance the user experience, but I decided to keep this to a minimum.

Satmap Active 10 Plus

• Needs to come with 1:50K GB OS maps as these are expensive to buy separately.
• Really old technology (Windows Mobile CE).
• Known to lock up periodically.
• A bit big and clunky, but a nice big screen.
• Poor battery life, mostly solved by included battery pack introduced with plus model.
• Reported good CS from Satmap.
• Expensive additional 1:25K GB maps available.
• No routing, though this is not an issue for me as I can use other devices.
• Weatherproof rather than IPX7 waterproof.

Garmin GPSMAP 62st

• I’m not sure if the accuracy is any better than the Oregon, I know it’s not as good as the CSx.
• Looks similar to CSx, poorer accuracy, same low resolution, small screen and big device.
• IPX7 waterproof, like almost all proper handheld GPSrs.
• Garmin list this as “top of the line”, but what does that mean? If you compare it to the Oregon 450 on their site it beats it on nothing, but loses on a few things.
• 3-axis compass. Oregon 450 also has this and it didn’t impress me over the old 2-axis compass on the CSx.
• Reads custom maps (and Discoverer maps).
• I know I can get an almost new one for just over £200 with a little luck. Should be easy after Christmas.

Garmin Fēnix

• Cool, wristwatch GPSr.
• Brand new release.
• No maps, but represents a trail and can follow a route.
• £350.
• Looks promising, but needs a while to mature yet. Not for me just yet.

Let me know if you know of any good reviews of these items. I want something like Patrick Roeder‘s excellent CSx review from all those years ago.

What I liked.

1. The time to establish a fix (lock on to satellites) was normally a minute or so on the 450 as opposed to 5-10 minutes on my CSx generally. The reviews I had read said it would establish a lock during boot time, but this proved to be untrue.
2. I loved the way I could navigate a route and still see where the nearest geocache was thanks to a dashboard (compass widget) I could configure on the map screen. I would have expected to press the compass to see the cache details and (most importantly) the hint, but no. You had to go through various screens to get this information, then all the way back to follow the route again, thus negating any benefit you got.
3. Discoverer OS maps was a step up from the much over-maligned Garmin Topo GB (though not always). I still can’t believe that Garmin won’t let you move the license to a new device if you damage or lose you GPSr. What a rip off! The downside of Discoverer was that you only got 1:50K, the map images were very low resolution so images were not sharp and downright blurred when you zoomed in and I found it very difficult to see the pointer on the screen. The OS map seemed to camouflage it. Processing power is still low, so re-drawing maps is not as fast as it should be.
4. Custom homemade maps are possible on this model, though in reality you have to use pretty small tiles before you run into the same blurring issue that you get with the Discoverer maps. It’s quite a painful process too.
5. Touch screen. I thought this would be an advantage, but compared to a modern capacitive screen this resistive screen was horrible to use. At least it sort of works with gloves on though.
6. Profiles. I created a profile for Hiking, Geocaching and Car. I then configured usage for each type. i.e. For Car, route along roads, show 3D map, display current speed etc. The downside here was that once the 450 totally lost all profile configuration, which took quite a while to set up again from scratch.
7. Paperless caching. I always carry a phone, so have tended to use this as a backup to POI GSAK macro on the CSx. Implementation on the 450 is pretty poor. Font size is fixed (for those of us that are at that age that we need reading glasses), some code causes lock-ups and the look is pretty naff.

Now for what I didn’t like.

1. The first time I took the Oregon out it reported the distance walked as being about 20 miles further than we’d been. When I looked at the track on the PC it had spikes of several miles where we had sheltered by some relatively small overhanging rocks. Later on a trip to Llangattock we had a similar issue with the total distance walked being massively out, but this time there were no spikes.
2. The screen. This is apparently a huge improvement on the earlier 400 model, but it is still rubbish. You need the backlight on full to have a chance of reading anything.
3. Battery life is very short. I imagine that much of this is due to the screen needing so much illumination.
4. While I don’t get the carabiner attachment (it just leaves the device dangling) I did try this from a rucksack. It just ended up getting damaged when I put my rucky down. I like to attach a short lanyard (the one supplied with the CSx) to my belt and put the GPSr in my pocket with the screen turned inwards for protection. While it was really annoying that it kept on beeping as it touched my thigh it more importantly kept the screen awake, thus running the batteries down. This is basic poor design. The screen lock doesn’t even help this scenario.
5. The device locked up on several occasions most importantly when I wasn’t even interacting with the device, so I wasn’t even aware that my track log was not being updated until some time later. Trying to open a cache listing from the map screen caused a reproducible lock up. Pulling the batteries was the only solution.
6. There are two main benefits these days of a dedicated hand held unit over a good phone. Ruggedness and battery life. These are only better on battery life because they are so huge. If my phone had batteries this size it would easily last as long.
7. Sat nav is a joke. For example, my trip to Llangattock there is a simple dual carriageway route almost door to door, but it was as if Garmin were doing their best to avoid this and take all the back lanes which doubled the distance and quadrupled the time. Device configuration was not the issue. Other experiments proved equally as ridiculous. It is possible that this may be a Discoverer issue rather than an Oregon issue.
8. Probably the most annoying thing of all was the downgrade in accuracy from my 6+ years old device. Sure, the early CSxs had the SirfStarIII chipset, which is still to be rivaled, but when walking a linear route with the Oregon and then walking back to the start point I was shocked at how much the two tracks along the same path strayed from each other. They were often 200′ apart. The CSx always had them within a few feet of each other.

I really tried to get on with this device, but it was truely hopeless. After a week or two I picked up my CSx from the sunny windowsill and it worked. The only problem was that the USB connector no longer worked which meant I couldn’t upload routes to it, but as POI are held on the removable microSD card I could still use these rather than waypoints. I had found myself using the Oregon only for recording my track, which the CSx was now more than capable of (and it did a much better job too). I was navigating using my HTC Android phone. I thought I would chance my luck and try to return the device despite the scratches on the case where the silly carabiner had dropped it several times. Garmin were less than helpful. To paraphrase their response it said, “Try resetting the device (like that thought had never occurred to me!) and if that doesn’t work then go away.” I had previously contacted them about obtaining replacement screws. They wouldn’t even reply. I decided to contact the retailer, which was met with a request to post the device to them, so I did along with a letter explaining all of the issues and the following working day I received the following email.

“We are sorry that you have had a problem with this item. Faults with items are rare and we hope that it hasn’t detracted from your enjoyment in the use of this product. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

You have been refunded to your original payment method.”

The full amount was refunded along with the cost of returning the item. The only thing I lost was the cost of the InvisibleShield screen protector (a rip off £14, my HTC InvisibleShield is much bigger and cost £10), but I was very happy. I would certainly recommend Wiggle, if not Garmin.

I don’t believe the device was any more faulty than any other Oregon after all the issues I have read and heard about, it’s just a rubbish device. Garmin should concentrate on the basics rather than messing around with silly frivolities like Chirp, cameras and wireless device to device transmit.

I placed it lovingly on a sunny windowsill and then set about the difficult task of replacing it, as this model had recently been discontinued. I had never had any interest in the newer Garmin products, as I had researched them from release and always felt they were inferior to the CSx, but now I would be forced to chose one. I went for the Oregon 450 with the Discoverer 1:50K OS maps of Great Britain. The best price was £315 at Wiggle, who are also an authorized dealer of Garmin products, so I went ahead and bought it.

I used the product over the next 10 weeks, taking it hiking, Geocaching and even up Ben Nevis, so it had a good work out. Read the next post to find out what I thought of it.