Author Topic: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps  (Read 5764 times)

ninthace

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #30 on: 15:51:46, 28/12/18 »
Welcome to the  forum G&P.
I think you would get better value out of VR as opposed to the OS app at present.  It is far more versatile in what it can do.  Bear in mind in both cases you get access to the web sites as well the phone app.  The OS site has certain good features such as the "snap to" function when plotting routes inside national parks but VR has the edge.  For example, when plotting a route on the VR site you can add intermediate way points, the OS site does not support this yet.  VR differentiates between tracks and routes and allows you to store both; the OS website just has routes.  If you contribute a route to VR you get credits when someone downloads it which can be added to your account; any route you publish on the OS site is free to all once you make it public and the publisher is anonymous.  There are other differences if someone wants to drift the thread a bit.
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ninthace

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #31 on: 16:18:55, 28/12/18 »
HI Ninthace. This thread has interested me to the extent that I have spent time on the interweb looking into the problems you found.
It looks like if you have two apps running that share a resource ( in this case GPS and Memory) then you can cause the apps to hang up.
The apps are vying with each other to get the gps signal and then compare if to the tracks in memory and even write the data to memory. Smartphones struggle to do this, actually it seems most normal domestic  computers struggle to do the same work for two different bits of software at the same time.
Also as I suspected in an earlier posting not all   smartphones are created equal.The ability to capture the gps signal does vary according to which phone (and even the manufactured age ) you use. Some have better hardware, some have better software. Getting both good together on one phone will take a bit of research but as ever google is our friend and the Galaxy 5 and 7 came out as good in July but with the underlying proviso that they are battery  hungry and not as good as dedicated GPS Devices such as the Etrex.
Thanks Jimbob.  The situation puts me in mind of one of the first programs I wrote for the Royal Aircraft Establishment on an old ICL machine.  It used both the printer and the graph plotter.  The latter was not normally switched on so I wrote a routine to tell the operator to turn the plotter on via the executive typewriter when the time came to plot the data.  For some reason, this created a deadly embrace between the line printer and the plotter and the whole thing came to a shuddering halt and the computer locked up solid - the operator was not happy!  I was nearly as popular the time my program got stuck in a loop and drew a neatly labelled graph axis the length of the drum of paper in the plotter before the operator could stop it.
I would have thought 50 years down the line, the resource manager would have solved these problems, obviously not.  The curious thing is that restarting the phone clears it and so far, in my statistically significant trial of 2 experiments, prevents a re-occurrence.
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BuzyG

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #32 on: 16:39:23, 28/12/18 »
Also as I suspected in an earlier posting not all   smartphones are created equal.The ability to capture the gps signal does vary according to which phone (and even the manufactured age ) you use. Some have better hardware, some have better software. Getting both good together on one phone will take a bit of research but as ever google is our friend and the Galaxy 5 and 7 came out as good in July but with the underlying proviso that they are battery  hungry and not as good as dedicated GPS Devices such as the Etrex.


That is interesting to note.  I did notice, when I switched phones, that the GPS signal is generally locked very quickly on my current S5.  It sometimes took an age, on my previous S3 and S4.

Mel

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #33 on: 17:23:00, 28/12/18 »
I agree with what Hillhiker said on page 1, backed up by what jimbob said on page 2.


Ninthace, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to do the same walk running only the OS app.  Then do the same walk again running only the VR app. 


My uneducated guess would be that if you don't have the same problem then the problem is/was the apps struggling for dominance over each other regarding resources (your phone's GPS and processor functions).  If you do get the same problem then it's most likely your phone.... basically confirming what Hillhiker and jimbob have said.


Now, chill and go for a nice walkies  :)




jimbob

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #34 on: 17:46:07, 28/12/18 »
VR often have sales and I can assure you as a tightwad I did not pay as much £25.00 towards my years OS subscription.

Yep samsung galaxy 5 and galaxy 7 seem to have a good gps set up according to my brain (erm actually google :D )
« Last Edit: 13:47:28, 29/12/18 by jimbob »
Too little, too late, too bad......

ninthace

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #35 on: 18:29:21, 28/12/18 »
I agree with what Hillhiker said on page 1, backed up by what jimbob said on page 2.


Ninthace, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to do the same walk running only the OS app.  Then do the same walk again running only the VR app. 


My uneducated guess would be that if you don't have the same problem then the problem is/was the apps struggling for dominance over each other regarding resources (your phone's GPS and processor functions).  If you do get the same problem then it's most likely your phone.... basically confirming what Hillhiker and jimbob have said.


Now, chill and go for a nice walkies  :)
  Already done that Mel.  It is only when they run together I have a problem. The 2 programs seem to be fighting each other, probably over the gps data in some way.  As I said, 50 years ago when computers cost millions and only had kB of RAM I could understand it.  I am disappointed that the resource management software in my Samsung with gB can't apparently overcome the problem - I thought those days were in the past.  What I still find perplexing is that they start running together, then stop after a 100 yards or so but will then call a truce after a reboot of the phone.  The deadly embrace must be something complicated or they would not start to run together at all.  The reboot must be clearing something somewhere to make them run together but why does it not recur?
Just have to go back to one or the other. In the meantime - has anyone else tried parallel running?
« Last Edit: 18:32:24, 28/12/18 by ninthace »
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alan de enfield

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #36 on: 23:51:12, 28/12/18 »
  In the meantime - has anyone else tried parallel running?



Is that where both legs go in the same direction ?
I tried it once and found it a quite productive method of locomotion.

ninthace

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #37 on: 08:43:59, 29/12/18 »

Is that where both legs go in the same direction ?
I tried it once and found it a quite productive method of locomotion.
No that is ordinary running. Parallel running is when you are beside yourself.
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Bigfoot_Mike

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #38 on: 08:57:59, 29/12/18 »
Didn’t Spotty Dog from the Wooden Tops do parallel running? #showingmyage

alan de enfield

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #39 on: 13:19:28, 29/12/18 »
Didn’t Spotty Dog from the Wooden Tops do parallel running? #showingmyage



"The very biggest spotty dog you ever did see"


A very nice dog but his acting was a bit 'wooden'

GnP

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #40 on: 15:06:09, 30/12/18 »
Welcome to the  forum G&P.
  VR differentiates between tracks and routes and allows you to store both; the OS website just has routes.  If you contribute a route to VR you get credits when someone downloads it which can be added to your account; any route you publish on the OS site is free to all once you make it public and the publisher is anonymous.  There are other differences if someone wants to drift the thread a bit.
Thanks for the welcome, ninthace.
Something I do at the moment, is when I have created a route in OS, I transfer it to basecamp to make a track out of it which I then transfer into my etrex 20x.
Do you know when you create tracks in Viewranger, will they be accepted as GPX files straight into Garmins. To save me doing this via Basecamp? I have an etrex 20x..Thanks.

A night under silnylon. Doesn't have the same ring to it.

ninthace

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #41 on: 15:22:48, 30/12/18 »
Thanks for the welcome, ninthace.
Something I do at the moment, is when I have created a route in OS, I transfer it to basecamp to make a track out of it which I then transfer into my etrex 20x.
Do you know when you create tracks in Viewranger, will they be accepted as GPX files straight into Garmins. To save me doing this via Basecamp? I have an etrex 20x..Thanks.
You cannot create a track in VR other than by walking it with VR running on your phone.  You can create a route though which I think is what you mean.  Yes you can export it direct to a GPX file via the menu button (top right of the view route screeen) to a file on your computer and then import that file directly into BaseCamp.  You can also do the reverse, create a route in BaseCamp, export it as a GPX file and then import it into VR as a route.
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sussamb

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #42 on: 15:39:52, 30/12/18 »
And you can place that gpx route directly into your Garmin, no need to use BaseCamp  O0
Where there's a will ...

jimbob

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #43 on: 15:54:42, 30/12/18 »
For clarification you can run VR on a normal computer for covering track to route amending or even creating routes. As Sussamb says any GPX route can be ported straight into  any device which accepts gpx.
Too little, too late, too bad......

ninthace

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Re: Stability of Mobile Phone Navigation Apps
« Reply #44 on: 15:58:19, 30/12/18 »
And you can place that gpx route directly into your Garmin, no need to use BaseCamp  O0
That is true but not if you wanted to turn the route into a track - not sure why you would want to but that is what G&P asked.
G&P  - if you are using the OS website to create routes you could export the route directly to your computer as a gpx file without involving VR.
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