viewranger app update

Fri, Jun 15, 2012

I’ve been using the Viewranger app on and off for a while but only used it in anger yesterday on Fionn Bheinn. I turned off wifi, bluetooth and all that and turned location services off on all the apps that were requesting it apart from Viewranger and the phone battery lasted all day with the app constantly active. On first start it takes about 5mins to get a fix but that’s more to do with the phone hardware than the app and the direction indicator can be a bit dodgy. At one point on Ben Wyvis it was showing us on the summit, which was correct but the direction indicator, when pointing back along the ridge on the app, was pointing the phone off to the south of the ridge. Not ideal. But the position fixing is spot on.

It showed us on the stalkers’ path all the way up with the direction indicator working pretty well most of the time. This is the first time I used it all day and didn’t bother with the map (which was in my sac though, along with the compass) and it worked really well.

So for day shots the combination of the ease of use of Viewranger with the backup of printed Anquet maps is the beez neez. For longer trips the phone is useless as it cannot be charged so it’s back to paper maps.