TomTomRider or Mobile?

Marco1150

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Hi guys,

Need your wisdom for my next trip. Long story short, my TomTomRider got stole. I don't like the idea to spend 300+ GBP now on a new gps system. According to your experience, can I use a good mobile phone with a solid data plan instead? Google Maps is serving me well here in the UK, but I'm wandering if anyone has had any particular good or bad experience using a cell phone as gps abroad.

My itinerary is mainland Europe, including France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, and Check Republic.

Thank you,
Marco
 
If you have a good data plan it should work. After Brexit it will become expensive because the UK will not be able to avail of the EU unlimited data roaming. Could get expensive. JJH
 
Hi guys,

Need your wisdom for my next trip. Long story short, my TomTomRider got stole. I don't like the idea to spend 300+ GBP now on a new gps system. According to your experience, can I use a good mobile phone with a solid data plan instead? Google Maps is serving me well here in the UK, but I'm wandering if anyone has had any particular good or bad experience using a cell phone as gps abroad.

My itinerary is mainland Europe, including France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, and Check Republic.

Thank you,
Marco

I have a Tomtom Rider 550 that I use on the bike and I also have the car kit.
However, I've been using the Tomtom Go app on a mobile in the car ever since it was released, I can't praise it enough. There may be some very slight differences in the routing algorithms as it doesn't always give the exact same route as the Rider, but that could equally be a settings thing. Journey time is always slightly overestimated so you always arrive a little early, which I like. I can see absolutely no reason not to use it on the bike, if I didn't already have the Rider that's what I'd do.
Download the maps before you go and you only need data for traffic updates.
Definitely recommended
 
If you use an iPhone it has to be Pocket Earth ...
 
You could get a Garmin Zumo.

A motorcycle GPS is more rugged than a mobile and easier to see.
 
Would I use a phone exclusively for navigation? No.

There again, if I just wanted to be told how to go from A to B, then I probably would.
 
Just binned my 550 for the go app.
On the plus side there is zero arsing around with the Bluetooth connections. It just connects to my head set and works! I can press the button on my senna and use Siri to open the app, hear camera alerts, play music, take calls listen to texts etc. Everything Tomtom said I would be able to do on the Rider, only this does actually work!

It also has a bigger screen (iPhone x)and is quicker to connect via a quad mount.

Like others have said download the maps at home and there is very little data use on the road. The maps do take up quite a bit of space though so if your phone is nearly full this will be an issue.

The only down side so far is there is no My Routes folder. So it only syncs my places via Tomtom MyDrive. Which means the excellent Tomtom MyDrive app is pretty much redundant, at least for the time being. You can still plan your routes on it, but you’ll have to add them as stops and it won’t be remembered.

Hopefully this will be rectified by Tomtom as it is there in the Android version of Go.

But then waiting for them to fix the iPhone Bluetooth issue was fruitless, so maybe it won’t be fixed anytime soon.
 
You can also run Kurviger, MyRoute, ViewRanger, Sygic, MemoryMap etc. There are many to choose from, some needing data, some not. However, my favourite, and the one I use most, is Tomtom Go.
 
Get a cheap rugged Android phone ( I use a Nomu 10, cost me £97). You can put the TomTom app on it and thereby duplicate the functionality of the dedicated device. Plus you have lots of other apps like Kurviger which is a superb app designed by bikers for bikers and which it incredibly easy to plan great routes on the go. I have Garmins and a TomTom 450, they mostly live at home in a drawer these days. The phone is all I need. My iPhone stays in my jacket pocket, it's the one I use for everything except navigation. BTW, the TomTom app on the iPhone misses some functionality that the Android version has, so you will be disappointed if you use that instead.
 
Thanks guys! Very appreciated. Few considerations:

- Screen size: my iPhone is bigger than usual GPS. So I find it more convenient.
- Since my lovely employer is paying the bill, I don't really have an issue with using the data abroad :D
- But now that you all have spoken so highly about TomTom Go I've downloaded it and wanna play with it this weekend (*please don't rain*)

Thanks again
 
Would I use a phone exclusively for navigation? No.

There again, if I just wanted to be told how to go from A to B, then I probably would.

I agree with you! I've spent the last month in planning in detail the routes I'm going to ride and have created a google map route for each day. Bright side: using the phone as navigator I don't have to bother to "import" maps on the GPS! They are just there.
 


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