this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Fortnine on YouTube recently did a video on using a rugged android phone as a motorcycle computer. It could work well for bikes too. After watching that I looked into it, and there are quite a few options available at all different sizes, many under $200.
Maybe you or someone here can tell me why it's a bad idea on a bike
I find that the battery on phones is way worse than a dedicated unit. My phone can do 3-4 hours of navigation before the battery starts to get worryingly low. My Lezyne Mega XL that I paid ~£50 for manages something like 30 hours.
I was going to replace my old bike computer (which got stolen) with a new Garmin, but ultimately decided against it.
I instead got a waterproof bike mount for my phone and use Osmand to track my rides (there's tons of other more user-friendly apps to use). Battery life is nowhere near as good as my old bike computer which used to last several days on a single charge - my phone goes down by around 10% for each hour of riding with the screen on, and in hot weather it shows an overheating warning (refuses to charge for a while after).
I don't think I'd go out of my way to get another bike computer though, perfectly fine with using my phone. I planned to use an old rugged phone instead of my current one... but ended up bricking it 😳😅
The only issue with a phone is that it might damage the camera. The camera has a stabilizing motor mechanism in it and this could potentially be damaged through all the vibration. The camera will be constantly trying to adjust the mechanism and that might burn it out or something.
I was going to just say an old android phone, too. It has all the computing power of any garmin, a gps that's probably good enough, a huge app catalogue, can be super cheap, and you don't have to deal with whatever crappy ui garmin designs. I guess it all depends on use case...