15 January 2015

Smartphone as GPS

For quite some time I had wanted to get a GPS to log my rides, plan routes and navigate on recce rides. Although I had briefly considered getting a dedicated GPS unit like a Garmin or Magellan, I found the value of a generic smartphone hard to beat. In Aug 2012 I bought an entry level smartphone - the Karbonn A5, then a newly launched Indian mobile phone. That phone was great value for the price (Rs 5000) at the time - the GPS worked great (especially with AGPS), it had a fast CPU and loads of storage. Based on the experience, here are the reasons I'd prefer a (smart)phone over a GPS.