I am looking to get a Koycera Torque S-701

http://www.expansys.com/kyocera-torque-kc-s701-black-279557/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKPbUm6PyS4

The Bear Grylls' phone?
(http://www.kyoceramobilephone.com/en/s701/)

Last week I and a group of friends backpacked the Solitario out at Big Bend Ranch State Park, TX. I used my cheap android phone gps along with a map I georeferenced on Maprika app. There is no coverage out there and the phone was put in airplane mode. It kept me found the entire trip.

Looks a lot like my Brigadier
http://www.kyoceramobile.com/brigadier/


I've had it for about 1.5 years and its been tested. My son played minecraft in the water in a creek in WV. I dropped it in the water on VA beach and had to kick around with my feet until I felt it.

The only Android "device" I have is not a phone but instead a tablet
This very capable tablet was way less pricey than my iPhone (and the Moto Turbo 2 I tried to like) and the GPS receiver is totally independent of other systems. I bought this for a specific ongoing project, but as long as it's available I decided to load it up -- apps are cheap enough.

Point is, why put up with a small cell-phone display when you can have one a little bigger that is much more capable -- the lines of text are longer and maps cover more area. Survival doesn't mean you need to suffer with a tiny display.

Just sayin'

Thats kind of what I did. I have the smallish 4.5" phone which fits in my pocket then an 8" tablet for when I need/want a bigger screen.
We actually have 4 tablets now, one for each family member. When my son kept getting told by a teacher we needed an ipad I gave him the prices of our 4 vs the ipad and so he could see that we could have one tablet for each of the 4 of us or one ipad that we all share and he decided to keep his

Not just maps too, you can use OpenDocumentViewer or AndrOpenOffice for offline editing. I run my own sync server so I'm not dependent on someone elses cloud or even on the internet, since I can sync via my local network.

I have tried to explain that already. The smaller the device the easier it to EDC and protect. The screen size does not matter much for a personal use, only its resolution. The map coverage on HD tab and on HD phone is exactly the same. I believe that 5.5" is ideal, as it provides usable onscreen keyboard already, but still perfectly pocketable device. Get reading glasses (the thin optics, I've recommended, is great because you can attach them right to the phone's back), and your screen size will be perceived as a huge HD tv screen or computer monitor. I have a tablet as well, galaxy note 10.1 (also with the Vacom stylus, as I would never buy anything without it ever) and I love it, however, 99% of the time I'm using the phone, while the tab is sitting on the charger nearby. Because there is no difference in capabilities at all, but the phone is much lighter and easier to hold in one hand.

That's an opinion. For older eyes, a larger display makes things visible without optics.

I take my glasses OFF for viewing small things up close. One thing about being severely nearsighted - you can see really well from about 6 inches away without your glasses. Of course your window of good sight only ranges from about 5 inches to 7 inches from your face,then you need your glasses back. That's pretty decent to see a phone up close, a tablet gets harder (being larger, you have to move it around to hit the sweet spot). So badly nearsighted people probably don't have to add optics, they just take the existing ones away. But it depends on just how nearsighted you are.

Thanks, my point exactly. I'm far-sighted; I need 1.25 reading glasses at arms length, 1.75 at my elbow. Close-in without readers, I need to blow up my iPhone display to the point that I have a very narrow view and at arms length I see no detail. So there you are, there isn't a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all solution.