GPS Devices vs Cell Phone Apps

For years I have used my Garmin GPS and the POI feature with little trouble. The first link is to a site with a lot of info you may find useful. The other is to a page with links to several POI files. The files contain every federal, state and local campground with descriptions, contact into, etc. I have found the POI files very accurate and complete. No commercial campgrounds at all. The way I use it is to enter a general location, such as Winslow, Az. Then I tell the GPS to find campgrounds either along the way or near Winslow. With only a couple of glitches, such as campgrounds being shut down, it is right on the money. Just download the POI files and install them onto your GPS and you are ready to roll. All for free.

http://www.uscampgrounds.info/

http://www.uscampgrounds.info/takeit.html

I was in a no cell coverage at all area the last two days - And I mean "none", wouldn't even display the carrier name, just "no service". Had no trouble with Apple maps on the iPhone and iPad. Apple's maps are "vector" based vs image tiles (unless you have satellite view (all those are images). With vector, the app can download very large swathes of territory for very little memory usage. Garmin (and probably the other GPS manufactures use vectors also). Google maps on the other hand needed to download image tiles - maybe they've finally changed, don't use so don't know.

Google's been using vector for a while, but their method for pre-downloading the maps is pretty unintuitive (read: convoluted and dumb).

Here's a link to info about it, but I still had to dig for a while to find the option to save maps: How-to-use-google-maps-offline-on-IOS-or-Android

We have Sygic for those times that we're out of cell coverage while driving. For hiking, we use Backcountry Navigator, which allows you to download topographic maps of the area you expect to be in.

It is a stunning place.  Beautiful evening skies in the high desert.  And definitely no cell service. Much of mojave is at best weakly served.  

I am a long time user of MS Streets & Trips and acquired the last version available (2013 as I remember) a couple years ago. You need a PC to run it and I like to leave my PC at home when I am on the road. Nonetheless if  you are after pre-planning a longish trip with many stops, it is irreplaceable. There are no updates available unfortunately so the maps are not updated. This is really only a problem in populated areas in regard to new streets that may pop up. As someone mentioned here there are POI databases available which can be imported into S&T. Want to know where every Costco is located or everyone with a gas station, it's out there. Walmart, Crackerbarell, and many others have databases available as well. The ability to get a real snapshot of your trip, including driving breaks, overnight stays, side trips is unmatched by any software/app I have tried and I have tried soooooo many. Once you are on the road there are many apps/mapping programs that are good for making local plans and alterations to your original plan but nothing beats S&T for initial planning. Microsoft suggests using the trip planning feature in Bing Maps as a replacement. Not a replacement by any stretch of the imagination.  It took me a while and a lot of research before I found out Bing Maps has a limit of 25 waypoints and you are never advised of this when you hit the limit. Waypoints are listed with letters A-Y. That's right, not A-Z. When you hit that point the 'add stop' button disappears but you can still search for locations and use the 'add to route' feature there. It does add it but when you add further stops it just replaces the last one and when you try to run the routing, it fails with a message that it can't find a route between two of the waypoints, no indication of which they are. It appears that Microsoft does not want to get back into the mapping software business and has allocated some barebones resources to the Bing Maps unit to quiet all of the outrage over discontinuing S&T. Along with S&T, Autoroute and MapPoint also got the axe. There is a lot of software out there to replace MapPoint which was more business oriented, allowing businesses to embed it on their websites to give directions to their facilities and for sales businesses to route their salesmen. These are not oriented toward the RV and general vacation planning segment and tend to be pretty pricey with yearly payments required. Google is ending their MyMaps experiment at the end of this month and it was kind of clunky anyway but you could export GPX files. The upside was that you could save MyMaps routes and thereby access them on Google Maps on your phone or tablet. Nothing in this realm comes  close to the ease of use and flexibility of S&T. If you have a PC or even a Mac with a Windows emulator, you can still download it for free or low cost. Try it out, I think you will love it. We all wish for an app that will run on our phones and tablets but until someone decides there is money to be made it's just not going to happen.

I have a couple of vehicle Garmin's I much prefer to phone apps. I don't think any one device is perfect, but I like using a standalone unit as no dependence on outside infrastructure. One of mine was the top of the line "trucking" version when I bought, this allows entering a vehicle profile, with all your weights and dimensions and is supposed to keep you off of routes based on your criteria. Can even select hazmat to keep you out of tunnels, etc. Which could be handy with propane on board a camper.

This may or may not be news, but there are only a very few sources for the database data, when you fire up a Garmin for instance, there are a bunch of copyright rights on the splash screen, that is because all that stuff is licensed from a 3rd party. Point is if one brand shows a road wrong, likely the next will too.

I like Garmin because (although probably not exclusive to them), I can create any GPX file, drop and drag it to the Garmin and it talks me right to my points as if built in POI.