Smart Phone

[glthomas]

Hi,
I need to upgrade to a smart phone.
Which operating system should I get?
Android is compatible with Garmin.
I phone?
Windows Phone?
I don't have any other Apple products at this time so I was leaning toward the new Windows Phone.
How much memory should I get on a new phone to load Active Captain and other apps to use offline?
Should I consider an I Pad and a cheaper phone?
If I get a Pad and Radar could I set up the radar screen on the pad and not the Garmin, etc.
I appreciate your opinions, a search brought up way to much info to read through... :lol:

 

[RProffer]

The Android phones are now out selling the iPhone - probably because of cost. Windows phones and Blackberry's are not selling well. My younger daughter's iPhone does not get as good reception/coverage as my Motorola Droid Razer on Verizon. Verizon has the best coverage of all the carriers, especially away from large cities and remote areas. (To avoid argument, there are exceptions). I have run tests with all the major carriers here in Southern Maryland and Verizon beats them all hands down.

Not all Android phones are equal. I have a Motorola Droid Razer and my wife has a Samsung Galaxy III. Both have real good reception. We live in a fringe area and have always had difficulty with reception - not with these phones though. My older daughter has a HTC and it has terrible reception. My wife and I both run Navionics on our phones and they work great and I recommend it. Unfortunately, Navionics does not currently include ActiveCaptain. I also run NutiCharts which does include ActiveCaptain but NutiCharts runs slow and does not run well - I don't recommend it.

To run ActiveCaptain, you must be connected to the internet. On a cell phone, that is accomplished by connecting to either broadband or wifi which cannot always be done when you are too far from a cell tower, unless you have a satellite connection. What I do is tether my laptop to my cell phone using either broadband or wifi, and run ActiveCaptain on the laptop and plan my voyage for the day. You can run ActiveCaptain on the cell phone but the larger display works better. I will either make notations on my paper charts or mark them in my Garmin Chartplotter. While I am connected, I will also check the weather and sea states with NOAA. I learned the hard way you cannot rely upon weather predictions from 2-3 days ago.

Hope this info helps.

 

[glthomas]

"Most of the third-party products support ActiveCaptain data offline - so no internet connection is needed."

The quote above is from the ActiveCaptian Website.
If I use it offline would that require a download to my phone and how much memory should my phone have for downloads like this? On the I phone 5 you can order up to 64 gigs of memory or 32 and 16gig.

 

[baz]

16GB iPhone handles ActiveCaptain downloads with plenty of room to spare. I don't recall the ActiveCaptain download size but believe it's under 100MB.

 

[Longbranch Louie]

We just purchased Microsoft phones via Verizon for better reception in our area. Im better equipted to use a dumb phone than a smart phone but we have noticed that the 4 g cobbles up data allotment fast. My wife used her gps while traveling and we used 90 percent in 7 days without really even going on line. If your going to use it to bring in continual info it will use alot of data time. You can set it to use local wifi when its available just like a laptop so it doesnt use the phone company's signal. Also the battery life is about one quarter of what my I phone was. Apparently all the tiles/windows eat battery. Im on it very little and still charge daily. The other thing is you have to be careful to back out of things you have open and shut down the screen or things will stay open. Im sorta missing my Iphone but I may just be fighting learn a new phone. Of course Im the guy that was confused when we got electric typewriters at work!

 

[RProffer]

ActiveCaptain will only run by itself when running under windows with an active internet connection. Otherwise, ActiveCaptain is a product that runs under another application as a plugin on various mobile devices.. My experience is with NutiChart running on Android. I purchased it and downloaded it from the internet and then downloaded the ActiveCaptain plugin from the internet. NutiChart does not require the internet after it is installed, except to do updates. I was not pleased with the operation of NutiCharts. I am not familiar with the other apps that use ActiveCaptain as a plugin. On my Droid Razer, the two nav apps I have use very little memory (a couple hundred meg). You will have to check with the other apps to see what they use. Most of the additional memory that people get for their phones is to install movies/videos, music, photos, and email. If you do not use all the memory hog stuff, then you should be okay with a basic phone.

I would recommend that you use whatever app you get for your cell phone as a backup in the event your Garmin goes down. The screen on you cell phone is way too small to use for navigation.