Bikemap: Bicycle Tracker & GPS

I have not been using this AP very long but so far I am impressed. It finds the best way by bike depending on settings. You can use just bike paths or a balance of bike paths and roads. It’s has taken me to a dead end a couple of times but that happens with all GPS APs so you need to use some common sense as well as the AP. Sometimes it diverts you off a main road and then puts you right back on the main road for a few feet which is a bit silly but then use some common sense look at the map and go the best way. Overall I am very happy with this AP and it’s better than Google maps for cycling.

If the starting and ending points of your planned route are close to each other, it won’t navigate: as soon as you start navigating, it says “you’ve arrived,” and stops navigation. If you deviate from your planned route (e.g. because of a detour) and then rejoin, at the next waypoint it says “you’ve arrived,” and stops navigation. If you turn off your screen to save battery, when you turn it back on it sometimes won’t update the display to your current position. One thing that would be helpful is if the Lock Screen could display a minimap of the current location. I came to a point where it told me to take a right turn, but there were two trails leading off to the right. I had to stop, take off my sunglasses, unlock the phone, find my current position on the map, and see which trail I was supposed to take. A minimap showing the current intersection and which route to take would be really helpful in that situation. Update: went on another ride. The app randomly loses all sense of location and direction, so it places me somewhere I am not, and tells me to “continue onto” the trail I am already on. The only way to deal with that is to stop navigation and restart. I have 6 saved “routes” for a 19 mile ride. This was easily the worst $50 I’ve spent on the App Store.

Well, I got the premier version paid for that and tried this out. It is just not ready yet in my opinion. The one thing that is needed is being able to connect to Garmin radar units. Like a lot of the other apps do and this doesn’t so I’ll quit using it even though I paid for it until maybe sometime they have it. there’s things I like about it and it’ll work for most people but the way I see it if you look through the reviews and the reaction of the developer is to say they’re sorry to hear that and could they give them information on where it happened and what it happened all that kind of stuff which to me is nothing more than a beta test so it’s just not ready yet. Also, it’s difficult to get it to point the map in the direction you’re going and you have to move there a little computer window out of the way to change it and it’s hard to do while you’re riding. Sometimes it just doesn’t work at all as far as moving on the map the way you wanted to move. They have recently fixed a bunch of bugs which was helpful but I’ll put it away for may be a few more months maybe next spring see how it works.