Anyone hike with Apple Watch?

[dervari]

Wouldn't you need to put your phone off airplane mode and use soem energy drawing wireless communication method to sync to the watch? That presents a problem, your phone battery will drain faster. A solution would be to only turn off airplane mode when you want to use your watch, but for that you have to take out your phone, at which time you may as well use it.

You can turn on airplane mode and then turn on bluetooth. It's not an all our nothing setting.

Your cell radio is the biggest hog. Wearables sync using BTLE (Bluetooth Low Energy).

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[Tundracamper]

As an update, I tried Gaia running on my iPhone on my latest hike this weekend. I was pleasantly surprised at the battery life on my iPhone 6. I did have a Mophie 3300 mAh pack on the iPhone. After 4 hours tracking on Day 1 and almost 8 hours on Day 2, I was still at 100% on the phone when I got back to the car and the Mophie wasn't dead yet (I had to leave the Mophie on to keep my phone from shutting of at 25F! So, I couldnt monitor just the phone. The low temp shutoff was a real issue even at 70% battery!). I did not control anything with the watch. However, based on playing with it today, it seems the watch will start the Gaia tracker on the phone EVEN when the phone app is not running. I'm really curious how that impacts battery life. I'm gonna test it with and without the iPhone app running to see if there is any difference.

I think Gaia will give me what I want for my 2-3 day section hikes. At least for now - even if the watch controls are not that useful.

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[tflaris]

Syncing only takes a few minutes. Watch can store multiple days of hiking.


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[TX Aggie]

If you just want to track your miles with your Apple Watch Series 2, try Runkeeper. It has the option in the Watch itself to use just the watch GPS. Just be sure to go to settings on iPhone and turn off the heart rate monitor if you want to extend battery life.

I haven't checked to see exactly how long the Watch battery lasts while using GPS, but I've heard about 18 hours continuous. If you have an Ankar the Watch doesn't drain it nearly as much as a full phone recharge, maybe 1/4 the drain.

I'm planning on getting Gaia, but was waiting to see if they would start allowing Watch GOS tracking only, sounds like they finally solved that issue.


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[la.lindsey]

I'm not interested in an Apple Watch for GPS stuff. I'd like one for everyday life, but for hiking, I want to use the watch to set up pictures and set the self-timer once I'm all posed and lookin' good.

Anyone tried this out? How far away does it work? I have a remote shutter but it loses connectivity and is so hit or miss that half of my pictures are me walking back to my phone looking to see if the dang thing worked.

Gotta keep the IG fresh, you know.


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[ki0eh]

I likewise have found the GaiaGPS Apple watch app to be glitchy and to cause battery life of both watch and phone to drop like a rock, as in won't make it through a dayhike much less be useful for sectioning.

Also recharging the Apple Watch requires another gee-gaw that plugs into a USB port. The magnet isn't very strong that holds the watch to the gee-gaw, and sometimes even now after 1.5 years I find to my chagrin that the watch didn't charge because it fell slightly off the sweet spot. And that's sitting on a flat table.

The watch does turn off, and you can eventually force it into a time-only mode. I used those tactics (no GPS-ing though) to get four days battery life out of the thing.

It survived a tubing trip through Boulder, so there may be some merit to keeping it as just a timepiece for a weekend hike when things get wet. I've ruined watches on weekend trips doing less.

The way to get longer battery life out of an iPhone is to off-board the GPS function to some device like a Bad Elf. If you remember to turn the Bad Elf off when not moving, you might get close to a week of on-trail time out of its charge. If you turn the iPhone on airplane mode and Bluetooth to the Bad Elf it will lose charge very slowly even if you are constantly checking your map app (on the phone, not the watch).

I must say I'm a bit disappointed with the Bad Elf's (Pro+ as recommended by another trail mapper) position accuracy for mapping purposes (i.e. making maps that get printed on the same presses as Trails Illustrated, etc.) even compared to a 10+ year old Garmin. It should be just fine for the "how far did I go today on the A.T." application.

[ki0eh]

I'm not interested in an Apple Watch for GPS stuff. I'd like one for everyday life, but for hiking, I want to use the watch to set up pictures and set the self-timer once I'm all posed and lookin' good.

Anyone tried this out? How far away does it work? I have a remote shutter but it loses connectivity and is so hit or miss that half of my pictures are me walking back to my phone looking to see if the dang thing worked.

I've done that all of once as a proof of concept. I've got a face for radio and a voice for newspapers, therefore don't try it out much!

[TX Aggie]

I just stumbled on what may be a great choice, especially if you don't already have Gaia.

GPS Tracks


You can add in waypoints and do all of that, and I haven't delved that far into it. But I did try it out with my Bluetooth and WiFi turned off on my phone, then started recording the track with my watch walking in the backyard. Came back in, checked to insure my phone was indeed not connected and nothing showed on the app. Once I turned Bluetooth back on, the track I just did with the watch showed up with a decent tracking.

This looks just like what I was wanting. A stand alone GPS for my watch just to track distance and elevation, while using a more robust app on my phone for spot checking.


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