good phone for oruxmaps

helo

im looking for a used phone to buy in poland to be used mainly for oruxmaps below 100euro. any advice ?

thanx for help

szczym wrote:helo

im looking for a used phone to buy in poland to be used mainly for oruxmaps below 100euro. any advice ?

thanx for help

"xperia x8" or "xperia x10 mini": both have ant+ support and are around 50-80€. Both are a bit slow when using mapsforge maps (openandromaps), but fully usable. X8 has a better screen.
Anyway, the perfect phone is of course the xperia active, because is water resistant, very tough and powerful enough, (and of course ant+ compatible) but more difficult to find used.

If you are looking a phone for outdoor use, ther is not much choice.
AFAIK, only 2 phones really waterproof and rugged:
-xperia active. + barometer, + glonass, + touchscreen with wet fingers, - low screen, low specs
-motorola defy. + bigger screen, + good specs, - touchscreen uncontrolable under the rain ...

Both should be below 100eur used.
About the defy:
- get rid of motorola social crap for the sake of the battery. Its almost mandatory...
- no HW diiference between defy and defy+ . The + is only overclocked, and has a higher capacity battery. So you can go for a cheaper normal defy, overclock it if you want, and buy any batteries, both fit, i've tested all that.

Please tell us which phone you finally buy

This is an interesting question. I have been using my T-Mobile G1 (rebranded HTC Dream) for about 4 year, till last month when I upgraded to Samsung Galaxy S3. Before doing that I got a Google Nexus HSPA+ and ran some GPS related tests, trying to compare my old G1 and the new Nexus side by side (both are Google phones). Tests were run in a (reasonably) remote area surrounded by hills (small mountains, if you wish, up to 1000 m) without cell coverage, with only GPS running (i.e in the airplane more). AGPS was cleared on both phones before the tests. Results were basically the same, the same sensitivity (G1 was a bit better - yes, it sounds strange, I know), the same number of satellites were seen by both phones (this is obvious), both could see 5 satellites and did't lock nevertheless. All in all, I did not notice any difference and therefore did not upgrade to Nexus.

Things I like about G1:
1) removable battery (at the moment I have 2 stock batteries and 1 extended (Sedio, 2500 mA));
2) real buttons, home, menu, power off (located on the front panel instead of the side as it normally done now) - extremely important when the phone is in a case/pouch.
3) appearance of the maps (let's speak about it in a different post, but high resolution screen really makes the maps look miniature and impossible to read unless you download the tiles of highest resolution/scale - that takes a lot of space on the SD card!);
4) reasonably small size;

Things I like about Nexus:
1) bigger stock battery, this phone is the _smartphone, that's it.

BTW, bigger battery does not necessarily mean the longer work time by default. Nope. The never JB 4.1 (the stock OS installed on Nexus) is more power hungry, the bigger and very nice screen of Nexus, more useful apps running in background (JB)- all this kills the battery. With G1 the situation was/is simple - I had rooted it a long time ago (installing Cyanogen ROM), all "bells and whistles" were removed and the phone turned into a more or less basic phone/music player with GPS/OruxMaps and several other navigation applications onboard. But I was in total control of the battery life, I knew how long it would last and was not afraid to take a phone as the primary GPS unit for a solo 5 day trip (open water).

After Nexus I checked for the phones with Glonass and decided to try S3 - this is a really good device when it comes to GPS. Let not speak about it right now since it's clearly out of the 100 euro budget (unfortunately).

But I would say the following - when people say "look" Xperia, Defy are waterproof, military certified phones - that is a good feature" I totally agree. And believe me I looked at them too since it's nice to know that you can drop a phone and it will survive etc. But I did not go that path because I also know - both phones have a very small battery that cannot be replaced, very modest screens and very small RAM. And while I don't care about the RAM size and the screen in this case I do care about the battery - I can easily swap the battery (when I urgently need it) and did it many times when I was outdoor. When such a need can occur? Like I said my G1 does not waist the battery but sometimes it straggles with getting a good lock and if I need the coordinates right now I will let it run (and move, searching for a better reception) as long as it takes even if I clearly see that is depleting the battery. But I don't care because I have a spare battery or two.

What is about waterproofness then? Easy, when I am outside I use Chinook Technical Outdoor pouch (check Amazon to see what I am talking about, Sierra also offers a similar protector) which is by design 300% waterproof () and let me use the screen without any problems (the lowest temperature I tried was -7C) in any conditions, like rain, snow, etc. I have dropped the phone in the ocean, in the lakes, on the trails (from about 1 meter), in the kayak - being in the pouch the phone perfectly survived all that (but after salt water I had rinse the pouch and this is a drawback). So, before I got S3 I asked myself if I really needed IP67 (or something like that) phone - and my answer was - no, I don't.
So, I suggest that you should consider other phones too without paying too much attention to waterproofness - it can be achieved by different methods.

best,

I would recommend the Sony Xperia Active, very great for mountain biking, there is also the holder for handlebars:
http://www.sportypal.com/, a little expensive but very useful!

How good is the visibility of the screen in sunlight with the Xperia Active? gp745 makes a good point about being able to replace a battery. That would be very high on my list as well as a screen that can be seen outside in daylight. I currently use a Galaxy S2 with an external BT GPS receiver which I keep in my pocket but I'd like to use a cheaper phone that I can mount to the handlebars so it's easier to follow routes when mountain biking.

cyberdude wrote:How good is the visibility of the screen in sunlight with the Xperia Active? gp745 makes a good point about being able to replace a battery. That would be very high on my list as well as a screen that can be seen outside in daylight. I currently use a Galaxy S2 with an external BT GPS receiver which I keep in my pocket but I'd like to use a cheaper phone that I can mount to the handlebars so it's easier to follow routes when mountain biking.

not the top of the top, but it's great if you adjust the right angle of vision.