Klink75

I just got a new phone today, a Google Nexus S (for free I might add, check Google today to see if you are eligible to get one if you have Sprint, T-Mobile, or AT&T). I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with the upgrades to the navigation apps over the previous droids. Built in traffic & updated maps are a big plus. Even though I've had a phone before with navigation, I still always used my Garmin while driving.

This made me wonder, what is everyone else using?

DawgsYellowJK

when the wife and i are out geocaching we use both phone and gps, we have a garmin oregon 550t and the wife uses her droid and i use my iphone

Phantasm

Mobile Phone GPS is great, but sux if you can't get signal or data feeds when you are in BFN. The standalones do better in that regard.

inverse121

I spend mucho time in the seat using GPS for work and I have a Verizon Iphone.
Many times when my Garmin (running 2012.20 maps) can't find something, the phone can.
I am not sure why the standalone maps are so out of date in some areas of the country, but they are.

I had a head cold last week and hadn't been thinking clearly the past few days. On Thursday I drove around for an hour using my Garmin and my mucus induced sense of direction, before putting the address in my phone only to find out the location was 14 miles from where Garmin thought it was. My phone took me right to the location.

jeepguy553

I use both my Motorola Atrix GPS (surprisingly accurate) as well as a Trimble Recon GPS/data-logger. I used the Atrix last weekend doing a GPS survey of a large plantation near Shreveport and the results were pretty good. I would say that the Atrix GPS was within 5 meters of spot-on. Now...with the Trimble unit, I can get to within 1 meter (or less) of dead-on accurate. The Trimble unit is a $2400 GPS/field computer that I use for GIS field data collection where my Atrix was only $450 brand new back in January.
For geocaching, my phone works fairly well but under a dense tree canopy it loses SAT lock. The Trimble unit doesn't lose SAT lock anywhere near as easily as my phone. Another cool thing with the Trimble is that I can load it with 1-meter-resolution satellite imagery, then overlay points corresponding to caches (usually I put them in what is called a shapefile using UTM coordinates) on top of the satellite image, then walk almost right to the cache; I can overlay USGS 7.5-minute topos with the points as well. Other interesting functionality in the Trimble is the ability to walk a trail (called a line feature class) or even trace out an area (polygon feature class) and have the GPS immediately report either distance/perimeter or total surface area in whatever units I designate. Lastly, with lower-end (called sportsman-grade) GPS units, I wouldn't even consider trusting elevation data. There are far and away too many errors that can seriously degrade vertical information. My Trimble is (obviously) a higher-grade (resource grade) GPS unit that can resolve vertical positioning much more efficiently than your average Garmin or Magellan unit. With that said, I saw a Magellan unit yesterday at a vendor presentation that impressed me. It was the Magellan Pro10. At $700 out-of-the box (and $100 for an optional Bluetooth 1-meter GPS card) it was impressive in that it had nearly the same capability that my Recon has in terms of accuracy and data-logging in a mobile GIS environment. I would like to eventually buy one of these units and match it against the Trimble unit to see how it performs.

Whiskeypete

use my Droid X, Google Nav, some other GPS apps all running on Verizon. they work great BUT...

in back areas i keep a small Garmin hand held hiking unit for back up. i got stuck a year ago and had zero reception on my cell. no phone and the gps was absolutely going crazy. took out the Garmin and no issues. if it wasn't for the Garmin I would have been screwed. I was wheeling solo, first time on a back logging road that went bad in no time.

$100 small hand held is a life saver....invest in one, it may save your bacon one day

mrlisk

I had sworn by my phone for nav but with it getting too hot to hold and glitchy software I'm beginning to lean back to a standalone unit. Haven't decided on a handheld or a standard garmin nuvi type though.

Pushrod

I have only recently been introduced to geocaching by my brother-in-law and have really enjoyed my limited exposure. I was using my smart phone with sketchy results, mostly getting various distances from cache depending on which direction I was facing. My job requires international travel and my success at geocaching has been very limited in other countries. I was recently in Luanda Angola and my AT&T phone was completely useless and only found a couple of cache by printing pictures from google earth of the locations. I will soon invest in at least a base model sportsman gps that doesn't rely on phone towers to triangulate a location. I am now trying to decide what gps would be fitting for this application. I don't want to invest a lot of money as some officials in third world countries are worse than pet coons when it comes to shiny electronic gadgets and will take them as they wish, foreigners being fairly powerless to stop them. Meanwhile at home I'm having a blast geocaching mostly enjoying the "get out and hike to" geocache. These seem to be rare in my area as it seams most want to jump out of the car and hide one 10 feet away. I guess it's time to hide a few on some of the many hiking trails in the nearby National Park.

HillbillyJake

When I am geocaching I always use my hand held gps. The phone works but eats the battery. When driving I use both my phone and my Nuvi. They both have their pros and cons.

Ntgas

Have both a garmin oregon 550 and the geocach app on my Nokia Lumia 800.

Both have worked well, phone for the impromptu finds and the Garmin for more planned trips.

Which do I prefer, well they do different jobs, so like and use both.