Toes, it is a toy.  Logic says the trick should work, therefore I am simply finding out which of the softwares will support the trick on an out of service cell phone.   Having found at least one, the testing goes forward when the service ends.    My daughter and son-in-law have a car with no built in GPS, and I am buying him a dash bracket for his old Galaxy S3 cell phone.

Heck, my proposed new cell phone is going to be a water-proof moto G and there is nothing (other than fear of damage) keeping it from going on the handle bars if it needs to.

Buying a new cell phone is fun, ALL of them are plenty powerful enough now-a-days and the trick becomes finding the cell service provider that offers the least cost best Bang for the Buck.

Sprint is lowest cost but it is out of the running because of relatively poor cell coverage, T-Mobile has their head on straight on pricing and has decent coverage.   All the rest are still mulling over the upcoming necessity to cut their pricing in half and just simply haven't done it yet.   They won't do it until it becomes obvious they simply HAVE to.

Take a look at T-Mobile -- they say they are a non-contract UN-carrier and they mean it.   Of all the main carriers, they are best price/best coverage/least restrictions for a full bore 4G system.

Republic Wireless is the one who started all this stuff going and they are still the lowest cost decent cell phone out there, selling you a first generation Moto G for $150 outright and having plans with full data, calls and text for $5-10 dollars a month -- providing you have good wifi coverage at work and at home to base it off of.

With Republic, if you need to add full cell tower based coverage for data sipping (vacation time only for me) you just punch in a change in your plan for the week you are on vacation -- you can do this up to twice a month right on your phone).

I like Republic and would go with them personally, but I have family who wants to go family plan to save everybody a bunch of coins.

Gotchya the non-service GPS is more of a 'can I' then a 'need to'  

I'm a cell phone tech and I have Boost Mobile $40/month and I have no issues with their service, actually I love it!  If you're looking for everywhere worry free my Wifey travels for work quite a bit and has had Verizon for the coverage, have you checked out their new Edge program? She went from $180/month down to $89/month +taxes and such still under $100.

Blow your mind time ..... using a wifi capable phone with no network card the various phone geeks have tweeked Google Voice, Google Dialer and Hangouts to allow the off-plan card-less phone to make and get totally free wifi only phone calls and texts.  

Internet access for this is through an app based browser.   Nothing works unless you have pretty good wifi at the location of course and are willing to go through some hoops to do it.   Trick also works with modern Android tablets with a microphone and speaker .....

Trick also works with Tapatalk ($7) and Skype (?)-- and it also works on mike/speaker equipped Android tablets too.

Obviously the major carriers hate that the idea even exists and are trying hard to make it go away.   The hackers are building an app to "do it all" integrated to the app, but you'd have to get the app off a torrent and sideload it as Google jest refuses to stick their finger in that light socket and they do still continue to refuse to touch their tongue to the school flag pole on any very very cold days.

(not being totally stupid you know)

Republic Wireless will let you do it though with full built in messaging and voicemail backup, for only $5 a month, which is cheaper than  Tapatalk or Skype will let you use one of their numbers.    Republic will even let you bring your own old phone number over for $40-$50 fee.

Yep, full voice & voicemail, text, and unlimited data (wifi only on all of these) for $5 a month -- legally.    But only on their phones ..... which they sell at cost, BTW.


   .... and as this change wave rolls along look to see even more options to go wireless on your phone.


I am telling family members it is actually better than having a land-line phone and a message machine, which some of them still deal with.   As you program in the wifi addys for all the places you go with the fixed passwords these places tend to use, then you have more and more instant service locations when making a call or getting a voicemail message.

S179 for a Moto G and swapping between $5-$10 a month for the plan, yeah I can deal with that.

How much do you spend a month for your cell phone?

savskad wrote on 12/22/14 at 15:39:22:


I uploaded one of these to my I-phone - and it called Eat,Sleep,Ride.  It works OK...but is nothing stellar, and it does not provide navigation.  You turn it on when you start your ride and it will show you where you are - but it does not function for navigation.  Once your ride is over it shows you the time you have been riding, time you have been sitting, average and maximum speeds, maximum lean angles (calculated from speed and curve data as it shows a lean angle even when I am driving my car), and it shows the route and you can link photos to it and share it with others.  I have not been able to find a way that you can use the routes posted by others for navigation to follow the same route.  One feature it has that is nice if you pay the money to subscribe....is an accident alert in the case of a crash.  It senses the conditions that occur when you crash, and asks you to respond to the I-phone and push a button....if you don't then it notifies someone that you have crashed and can give the location.

It may have some really good features....that I am not technically able to access.  I tend to be more of a mechanic minded guy that directs my attention to how the bike is running and I focus more on enjoying the ride...I don't tend to focus much on the technology available for recording or recovering the ride information.

http://app.eatsleepride.com/
  https://eatsleepride.com/

Oldfellor:

When MM and I were riding around the Blue Ridge area on the July ride, we relied on his Garmin and it always had a signal (that doesn't mean we never got lost!).  I would occasionally try the GPS and navigation on my phone - but as you stated the service was very spotty and 80% of the time I had no signal......and as a result no GPS navigation!

Oldfellor:

You may be right......if I didn't have a cell signal I didn't even try the GPS navigation function.  When I saw I was in an area without any cell service....I just shut my phone off to save the battery as I didn't have a cell phone charger on my bike yet.  The Navigation function really sucks the battery power down fast.

In prep for the Dragon Run I have begun installation and testing of the out-of-service Galaxy S3 as a navigation tool.

Items seen so far:

Must have a constant charger connection -- the battery gets sucked down way too fast because your are CONSTANTLY searching for the GPS satellites and you are running the screen at FULL BRIGHTNESS so as to be able to see it at all in the sunshine.  I also set my Galaxy S3 to use maximum processor speed to try to get it to update more quickly.   Battery wouldn't last very long without constant recharging off the bike's electrical output.

Next, Navigator was/is a cumbersome old program intended for truckers, and the maps (although just downloaded today) do not show some current road changes.  When carried inside the house and hitting on my router wifi network the phone will seek out updates on the Navigator software automatically.  However, the way you get routed around by the program is the way a truck would get routed -- it is a commercial or truck style program after all.

Why use Navigator?   First, it has a free version that is really free.   Second, it will search out satellites and then navigate you off the satellite data against maps that stored inside the phone -- no connection is needed to anything.   I am storing the state maps for the entire USA on a 16 gig SD drive, so it can carry what you need no matter where you go.

Compared to trying to read a map while rolling down the road, it is much much better.   Compared to what you have in your car now-a-days -- it sucks.

I now have to rig up a powered USB connection on my bike ....

What kills the battery is the light, turn that off and it'll last much longer.