- Joined
- Mar 16, 2017
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Ah, the world of electronics. I have a fairly new Garmin that I paid upwards of $400 for. For about $300 I can buy useable usgs topo maps for the US, and for another $300 the same for Canada. The unit comes with free subscription for a site where you can download satellite imagery. Downloading the imagery is glitchy and you really need to budget days on end to download enough for a lengthy trip. The topo that comes with the unit is not useable. Then I have a SPOT which was about $50 but has a subscription of near $200 a year. I also have a waterproof digital camera, a Pentax WG3 which takes nice photos and videos. All these units take AAA bateries and can be recharged using a solar panel.
But then, I also have a smart phone. A Gaia subsciption costs, I dunno, $50 for 6 years or something ridiculously cheap, comes with all the satellite imagery, usgs topos, historic topos, and a whole mess of other map overlays. All can be downloaded for offline use. It also has a camera, that has better resolution than my Pentax, turns on instantly so I miss fewer wildlife shots and videos are pretty sweet too. It's getting old, it's a Galaxy S8, but still has a waterproof rating of IP68, which means you can chuck it in the water and leave it at a depth of 1.5 meters for a half hour. True, it does not allow the use of satellite communications but I can send a text whenever there is a line-of-site to a cell tower, which is more and more frequent these days.
So I could replace these other bulky, heavy devices with one slim phone, but it has an internal battery that needs some sort of charging. Does anyone else use their phone for navigating all day and have experience keeping it charged with power banks and/or solar chargers such as the Goal Zero?
But then, I also have a smart phone. A Gaia subsciption costs, I dunno, $50 for 6 years or something ridiculously cheap, comes with all the satellite imagery, usgs topos, historic topos, and a whole mess of other map overlays. All can be downloaded for offline use. It also has a camera, that has better resolution than my Pentax, turns on instantly so I miss fewer wildlife shots and videos are pretty sweet too. It's getting old, it's a Galaxy S8, but still has a waterproof rating of IP68, which means you can chuck it in the water and leave it at a depth of 1.5 meters for a half hour. True, it does not allow the use of satellite communications but I can send a text whenever there is a line-of-site to a cell tower, which is more and more frequent these days.
So I could replace these other bulky, heavy devices with one slim phone, but it has an internal battery that needs some sort of charging. Does anyone else use their phone for navigating all day and have experience keeping it charged with power banks and/or solar chargers such as the Goal Zero?