Bushwalk Australia

Can anyone recommend a decent GPS iOS app?

I want to be able to click points on a map and it automatically snap to trails and give me an accurate-ish distance and elevation chart.

I'm considering a hike in China, have had a crack with GAIA but it's very clunky. I tend to hike in SE queensland so it would be good if it works here too.

As there were no replies - figured I'd post an update in case it helps.

Gaia seems to work well most of the time. There are some occasional bugs when creating routes - with waypoints not saving but the problem seems intermittent and it mostly works (I deleted two routes that weren't working as expected and redid them).

I like the ability to add a custom map and use the Google satellite which is higher resolution than the ones that are currently available in the paid app. The google map also has no cloud cover in the particular area of China that I'm planning a hike.

In action so far it works well but my tests are far from comprehensive - 24km on Morton island so far.

If you want to use it in China, then OSM compatibility is essential. Google is useless and any other commercial maps are all lacking in detail. For domestic road needs, then you should look into one of the Chinese apps.

For OSM, Pocket Earth is my favourite on iOS.

I haven't tried Pocket Earth but if I read the information correctly it requires an internet connection to do routing. So no snapping to trails when in airplane mode. But it otherwise looks quite good.

I've been using MapOut on my iPhone. It's a lot simpler but will allow you to get a distance/elevation profile when in airplane mode.

I use both MapOut and Gaia. They each have features that the other doesn't have. It's worth considering having more than one app.

Orion wrote:I haven't tried Pocket Earth but if I read the information correctly it requires an internet connection to do routing. So no snapping to trails when in airplane mode. But it otherwise looks quite good.

Pocket Earth can cache map data by the region for off-network use and will update to the latest OSM data automatically or at defined frequency. I normally keep around 1.2G of map data with the app to cover my areas of regular use. Know Gaia and will look into your other suggestion, but I like the interface of PE the best of all the apps I’ve tried.

Wouldn't google be a non-issue if I download the maps prior to departure? That was the plan.

I use GPSkit

Its pretty good.. you can download and cache high res maps to use offline, load other peoples .gpx files and overlay the waypoints onto the cached maps.

It doesn't drain your phone battery.. It does loads of other stuff, but that's all I use it for.

spittle wrote:Wouldn't google be a non-issue if I download the maps prior to departure? That was the plan.

Google offline maps are great for road navigation but very limited for walking. You can't download terrain maps, just their default maps. There is no way to "snap to" trails to create profiles. You can't even do walking navigation in a city, only driving.