I’m sure there are plenty of others too. I haven’t tried using Garmin livestreaming because there are so many reports of it being a pile of $hite, and I have no need to transmit anything that my phone doesn’t already know (without needing a connection to my Garmin). I’ve also recently installed Google Trusted Contacts so that if I forget to switch the tracking on, and my wife is curious about how far away I am, she can grab my location without me having to respond to a text. I’ve also just bought a Specialized helmet which has the ANGI thingy, but I haven’t fiddled with the app for that yet, so no idea if that’s a good replacement. One good thing about the Greenalp thing is that it shows where you’ve been too, so the viewer gets an idea about the journey, not just a current location. My wife uses Glympse on her iPhone, which works pretty well too, but I’ve no idea of the battery drain.
Iphone for me, so Glympse looks like it might be a goer. Weird I have been futzing this for two years now since my Livetrack drained my phones and caused some minor family anxiety. I never considered just using the phone on it’s own to drop the bread crumbs. Odd how we can become so blinded to the obvious path. In fairness the last time I tried that was in '13 with Mapmyride. That killed the phone back then which was why I moved over from Polar to Garmin.
Do you low power the phone or do anything to preserve the battery?
No need for any explicit battery saving for me. On my Android (Sony XZ2 Compact) the battery life is more than enough. I did a bunch of rides that each lasted maybe 8 or 9 hours in the summer, with the GPS tracker running, as well as RideWithGPS running and following a route (so that it could send navigation audio to a bluetooth earbud). I can’t remember how much battery I finished the rides with, but it was never close to running out. I think that the screen is the biggest battery draw, and if that’s off and the processor is not very busy, then the battery doesn’t take much of a hammering at all.
Thanks will give it a go. I did a Tour of Flanders route in September and the Garmin live track was on for the family. I had to turn the phone off at the last reststop with forty to go (<10% charge). So about 5 hours in. I don’t think my phone is very happy with BTLE or Garmin Connect just sucks: Same thing happened 2 years ago with a Samsung. There I got 8 hours, it was a 300km route. In that case the phone died entirely unknown to me till I stopped. Family were a little concerned the dot had stopped moving. So cheers will give it a lash. May try low power mode too. Need WiFi on the iPhone for location service
If you are both on iPhone use the Find my Friends feature. We’ve been using that with our kids for a very long time (7 or 8 years?). It just works and no special apps required. I access it by clicking Info in the Messages texting app.
We use Find My Friends for the family. It works great and is always on. As near as I can tell it does not use any power beyond the basic location services that almost everyone has turned on already. FMF is not really a tracker app like Garmin or Strava. Rather, Apple already knows where your phone is all the time as part of the phone’s basic operation and the app just lets someone access that data if you’ve agreed to share access to your location with them.
Just checked. I can see the kids Fornite-ing their brains out at home . This works. Missus is on Android… Minor issue; Find My is a point-in-time thing and Glympse only has a 10 minute track. So it would be hard for them to determine ETAs based on distance of a full ride. Can’t seem to find an unequivocal answer on what the other options do. I see UA have MapMyRide paywalled for the live tracking. Not clear if that is a full track or a Glympse style thing.
I don’t think it is smart to turn on airplane mode in many situations: I’d like my partner to know where I am, so that in case something happens, she knows where I am. Updating things manually is not a solution here.
If you are just recording your trip and keep your phone in the back pocket, I easily get battery life well in excess of 7 hours. Anything longer than that, and I carry a small Anker battery (a round, cylindrical one that is relatively small and charges my lights and my phone if the need arises).
As someone who doesn’t own a modern cycling computer — yet, I can confirm that a phone is not a replacement for a cycling computer. You can do without a cycling computer in many situations, yes, but they nevertheless offer benefits phones don’t have.
FWIW, once the kids crawl out of the basement, the app gets more interesting I have a daughter who travels a lot for business. On any given day, I don’t even know what state she is in unless I check the app. Find My Friends worked when one of my kids went to Morocco earlier this year too.
Edit: Actually I am quite late to the party, sorry. Anyway, I am in the transition to replace my Garmin Oregon 700 with a proper bike computer and will keep and I on this device.
WhatsApp has a handy feature that allows you to share your location for a specified amount of time with a contact. I assume it also works with a group but I haven’t tested that.
IMHO that’s not smart. If something happens, and you are incapacitated, your spouse has no idea of knowing where you are. I always share my location with my wife when I head out. Even if it is not always up to date, she has an idea what is going on, and if my dot isn’t moving or is suddenly located on top of a hospital on the map, she knows something is wrong.
I only go into airplane mode to save battery when in the mountains where there is ZERO cell coverage, and those are either gran fondos or club rides. And I wear RoadID on all rides.
My biggest problem with using a phone is that it doesn’t get a signal for important parts of important rides. But my bike computer and FindMeSpot still do.
But I do keep a phone switched off somewhere on the bike just as a tertiary backup.
If you’re just puttering around town I think a phone will do just fine, though. So go ahead with your bad self!
. This works. Missus is on Android… Minor issue; Find My is a point-in-time thing and Glympse only has a 10 minute track. So it would be hard for them to determine ETAs based on distance of a full ride. Can’t seem to find an unequivocal answer on what the other options do. I see UA have MapMyRide paywalled for the live tracking. Not clear if that is a full track or a Glympse style thing.
I have a daughter who travels a lot for business. On any given day, I don’t even know what state she is in unless I check the app. Find My Friends worked when one of my kids went to Morocco earlier this year too.
But my bike computer and FindMeSpot still do.