Quote:
Originally Posted by kien
The added bonus is that you can also use your smart phone as a portable web browser by enabling wifi whenever you want. Plus you can use it as a point and shoot camera. Or music player. All of these features you can use without having any cellular data plan on the smart phone :-)
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That's pretty slick! A market for old smart phones. I still like my phone to be just that & haven't bought into any new plan other than whatever the older network (3g?) is, but this has me thinking... Although if you're going to go this route, why not simply get one of the newer, small tablets with GPS hard/software? Larger screen than an old smart phone... better for folks like me with small font reading issues. I can sort of see why few retailers stock much in the way of GPS hardware any longer, virtually all new vehicles have it built in to their audio/video systems these days and as mentioned most new smart phones have GPS as well.
I did see an ad for a new 'heads up' GPS that mounts on your dashboard & displays info on your windscreen...
Personally, I find my old Garmin Oregon 200 adequate for most situations. I originally purchased it mainly for my backcountry adventures, but it has a number of mode & profile options including hiking, road, marine. All can be customized or you can use them as is. The only thing it doesn't do is talk to you, which is fine by me. It's also a bit small, but that's because it's main purpose is for travel in the boonies, so size & weight are important. I've used it in my cars, motorbikes, bicycle & paddling. A few accessories such as a "RAM" mount & power cable to save the batteries is all I needed to purchase separately. Also had to buy the Garmin Topo Canada maps back when I purchased the unit. I think the newer ones have most of the street & highway mapping info included, the Topo is only needed for backcountry travel. For road travel in the USA I would need to buy additional map software.
Here's a screenshot of data downloaded from the Oregon 200 & imported to Google Earth. Not bad for a unit that's a few years old & no longer made...
