Review: MapMyRide App for iPhone

[Catrin]

I've been meaning to try this application on my iPhone to see how hard it might be on my battery. I do keep track of my rides on MapMyRide and this application records your route. It works well for shorter rides, but haven't tried it for a ride longer than 90 minutes before.

To cut to the chase, it totally drained my 100% charged iPhone in 28 miles - and of course I didn't realize that until after I had completed the 40 mile ride. Granted, I am not the fastest out there, and Mr. Wanderer isn't the speediest bike so it probably took me longer than some to complete those 28 miles... Part of the reason it is such a drain on the battery is in order for the application to work the phone cannot "go to sleep" or be locked. This is a hard enough drain on the battery, then combined with the GPS at the same time it just gets worse.

It is a nice feature though, and it is good to know about how long you have until your phone is totally sucked dry. Kind of defeats the main purpose of having a phone with you on a long and solo country ride - better to map your ride on their site manually or with a GPS upload of some kind....

I know that people complain about the iPhone battery life anyway - but I've really never had any reason to complain about it. I have the 3G.