Chisel — as I’ve noted many times over the years, I like GPS technology a lot, just not in my cellphone. I have a Garmin Nuvi in my truck which I use routinely and a “few” Garmin handhelds for hiking. Note: it appears the Garmin Nuvi family has been replaced with the Garmin Drive & DriveSmart families. If you don’t currently have a GPS, I highly recommend one of the Garmin receivers. They’re very useful in keeping you from getting lost and finding unfamiliar places.

If I’m out hiking/walking, I prefer to use a dedicated GPS receiver rather than use a cellphone for navigation. In an emergency, the cellphone may be needed for communication and I’d prefer to keep its battery-life for airtime. Garmin receivers do the navigation thing quite well and my flip-phone does its thing quite well, no reason to compromise either one.

OT: I took my old Garmin Foretrex 301 (GPS) wearable out the other day and halfway through the walk the (lithium) batteries died — not good. The battery indicator showed good when I started and yet an hour later the batteries were dead. So I restarted it and it lasted for one more waypoint and died again. That was the last waypoint I needed so it stayed off for the rest of the walk.

When I got home I started looking at replacements because the battery life was much less than I expected. Turns out the Foretrex 601 has a larger, higher resolution display plus a basemap and sensors lacking in the 301, and supposedly gets over 2x the battery life from the same two AAA batteries. Why is that? Turns out the 301 has a B&W LCD display and the 601 has a larger, 4 level gray scale (LED?) display. Who would have guessed that an LCD display would be such an energy drain. Anyway, a Foretrex 601 is inbound. So yeah, I like GPS for staying found, whether driving or walking.