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What are the pros and cons of geocaching with an iPhone. Is it a suitable substitute to a dedicated handheld GPS unit if you're a serious geocacher?
Though quickly, and usually ignorantly, dismissed as a ‘toy’ GPS by many long time geocachers who haven’t tried it, the Apple iPhone has now become one of the best tools for a serious Geocaching treasure hunter.
Here’s a list of reasons the iPhone, in conjunction with the official Geocaching app, is a great tool for geocaching, followed by a few disadvantages to think about.
Reasons to go Geocaching with an iPhone
- You can ‘surprise’ geocache There are times when you find yourself in a new location and some spare time to go Geocaching. One major frustration of owners of traditional hand held GPS units, such as the Magellan Explorist or Garmin devices, is in a situation where some spontaneous Geocaching is possible and they either don’t have their GPS with them or they may not have any geocaches of that location loaded onto their GPS unit. If you use an iPhone as your Geocaching tool, then you’re probably using it as a phone also. Because it’s your phone, you carry it everywhere with you. So for starters, you always have your geocache finder with you. Not only that, but the iPhone can load all the nearest geocaches without any prior planning. As long as you have your phone with you, you can find some caches basically anywhere and anytime. NOTE: you do need phone coverage to load the list, unless you have preloaded them or saved the caches earlier. But you don’t need coverage to use the GPS feature.
- It’s always up to date With the traditional handheld GPS, you have to preload the geocaches. This means that after time passes new caches appear, others are archived, but unless you have updated your unit that day, there will be geocaches on your unit that are missing or out of date. Depending on your last download as to how much error there will be. With an iPhone you don’t have to manually update any caches at home before you go. The search results bring up, either in a list or map view, the up-to-date listings. If a new cache goes live minutes before your search, you’ll have all its details on your iPhone while you’re out.
- Aerial views One of the greatest advantages of using an iPhone for Geocaching is the ability to load an aerial photo of your location and see where both you are and where the cache is. This is especially useful if your GPS signal is not very strong and your location is ‘jumping around all over the place.’ Having an aerial photo with a pin where the cache is means you don’t need to know specifically where you are to be able to get close -- you can go off an aerial photo view instead. If you’re in a forest with plenty of threes, this doesn’t help very much as it’s hard to identify which tree is which, but if in a more open suburban environment, then it’s easy to see at which single tree or park bench the cache is hidden.
- Paperless caching Not only do other GPS units require preloading of cache locations, but many of them do not load the cache details also – just the location. This means that you need a print-out of the cache listing, which contains the cache size, difficulty ratings, description, hints and recent logs, to help you know what you’re looking for. If you want to find several caches, the printout takes a lot of time and paper to prepare beforehand. The iPhone eliminates the use of any of this paper. It loads everything we just mentioned, as well as photos and, sometimes most importantly, when it was last found and the latest log entries -- which could have been posted mere minutes ago. This is especially helpful if the cache has been recently taken down for maintenance.
- Log on the spot One of the down sides of Geocaching is logging all your finds when you get home. If you’ve found a lot, they start to blur together. “What did we put in and take from that cache again?” The iPhone allows you to log there and then if you found it, didn’t find it or if it needs maintenance etc. This means you can log as you go, while in the ‘high’ of the find. Logging it on your iPhone means you don’t have to do any logging when you get home – it goes through to the website automatically. You can also drop and pick up Trackables, such as Travel Bugs and Geocoins, as you go, making the cache listings up to date for others. No more Trackables logged as taken from the cache you put them in before you could log them.
- Live compass The iPhone 3GS and higher models have a ‘live’ compass that works while you stand on the spot. Other GPS devices usually require you to be moving to be able to point you in the right direction. This means you can have a map view or aerial photo view that spins and stays facing the right direction if you chose to.
- Up-to-date cap of finds Whether you log your geocache finds on your iPhone or at home on your computer, when you load a map of the nearest geocaches, or geocaches near some other location you choose (you don’t have to be near them) it will show you which caches you’ve found, and which ones you haven’t without any need to update, as you would on most other GPS units that have preloaded listings. You can filter out the caches you’ve found also and just view the unfound caches.
So that they are some of the bigger positives about going Geocaching with an iPhone, but there are some negatives.
Reasons not to go Geocaching with an iPhone
- Battery life The iPhone can ‘die’ due to lack of battery power within a few hours of serious caching. Of course there’s no need to buy endless batteries, or fuss about with charging individual batteries, as you can charge your iPhone in the car, via your computer or at home at the wall or in a docking station. But when you’re out in the field you need to be very conscious of battery life. It would be no good for hikes of two or more days without being able to charge. Though other handheld GPS devices may use many batteries, you can also carry a supply of them with you, which is possible but expensive to do with an iPhone. You can buy portable battery chargers and extra life battery cases, but they are reasonably expensive compared to the AA or AAA batteries of other units.
- Delicate build While traditional handheld GPS units are quite tough and even waterproof, the iPhone is much more delicate. While caching, it is normal to be walking over difficult terrain while holding your GPS device and so doing this with an iPhone is a risky business. A tough case is probably best purchased for your iPhone, possibly even with the extra battery built in, might be a good addition for adventitious cachers.
- Price The iPhone is rather expensive compared to some other handheld GPS units available. However, if you’re considering buying a ‘good’ handheld GPS unit this may have a cost that is similar to an iPhone – in which case I would say this: why carry a phone and a GPS around, and why pay twice when you can buy one device that does both quite well?
- Reception Loading caches usually means your iPhone needs to be on a data plan to be able to download the information, (which may be about 10mb for an afternoon of caching, depending on you use) but more importantly, you need phone service to load the information. This may be a problem if you plan to go caching out in the wilderness where there is no phone signal reception. In this instance however, you will need to preload your caches, as you would on a normal handheld GPS unit. NOTE: You do not need phone coverage to be about to use the GPS on the iPhone. Phone coverage is only needed to load maps and information. If it’s preloaded or saved before you are out of service you do not need phone coverage to navigate.
- Accuracy Allegedly the iPhone is not as accurate as a dedicated handheld GPS unit is. I haven’t had any more problems with the iPhone’s accuracy than I had with my two different Magellan unit’s accuracy. However, perhaps the ultimate solving of the issues of accuracy, battery life and fragility, you could purchase something like the Magellan Portable GPS Navigation & Batter ToughCase for iPhone.
So there are some disadvantages of the iPhone, but each has a work-around that allows you to enjoy the advantages of geocaching caching with an iPhone. I highly recommend the use of an iPhone for geocaching.
Copyright Scott Wegener. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.
Scott Wegener - Scott Wegener is a multi award-winning creative writer who lives in Melbourne Australia.
