Strava compared to Wahoo and Garmin

Hey Peeps, I’m curious how well the Strava app on a phone compares to dedicated bike computers like Wahoo and Garmin’s. I think the phone battery won’t last as long with the much larger screen, but how is it otherwise?

Not great, you’re better off buying an inexpensive bike computer, you can get decent ones for about $50.

I’ve used RideWithGPS with iPhone in airplane mode and can get 16-20 hours, depending on how many times I temporarily disable airplane mode to check in and send pics to family.

Ohh, I hadn’t thought of that. So GPS and Bluetooth are still available in Airplane Mode?

Last time I used airplane mode was a few weeks ago, and both WiFi and Bluetooth (Apple Watch) kept working. Been a couple years since dual recording with RWGPS, but even then both GPS and BT/Watch were working.

GPlama tested this two years ago: Strava iPhone App vs GPS Bike Computer (Elemnt BOLT) - YouTube l

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Not as long, but plenty long enough. I have an iPhone 7, and I can easily do 9-hour rides with the iPhone tracking my location via Strava. For any trips longer than that I carry a small Anker battery that cost me about $20. And for longer trips I’d be cutting it close and then I want to carry the spare battery anyway in order to be able to charge my lights. The disadvantage of a phone is more that you don’t have immediate access to stats like power and speed. I also activate location sharing the whole time and do not disable the cell antenna.

You could use a handlebar mount and a bike computer app, but when you leave the screen on permanently, then your phone battery will indeed be sucked dry.

Location accuracy is great (e. g. I used it to record my last race and the difference between the official distance and what my iPhone measured was 20 meters in total, and that was in an area of bad reception). However, elevation data is meh, and Strava hopelessly overestimate the elevation gain.

Yes. You can also enable wifi.