Spot or iPhone

[EricV]

While it's definitely true you can run into areas of the US when your cellphone loses its data connection, that doesn't mean that your track won't appear on Spotwalla. The app (BubblerGPS on Android) on your device still reads GPS info from your device regardless of a cell data connection. When that connection is reestablished, all stored data is sent up to Spotwalla's servers.

That's quite true. Eventually, it will show up. I was using Bubbler GPS to Spotwalla in a 12 hour rally. About half of my OK messages required at bonus locations for live scoring, did not show up until the following day. Thankfully, that rally live scored me when I got to the finish w/o penalty. It was, however, more work for them. If I had just kept my Spot, I would have had no issue with live scoring. My data plan simply couldn't handle the OK on top of bonus pictures being sent and throttled me down on data. Now, I will never know if the pics would have made it through w/o the OK pings, as the pics are more data heavy than the pings.

The lesson there is to know what your cellular data plan will do if you exceed certain levels in a short time period.

 

[MarkG]

Originally I wondered why anybody would spend money for the satelite devices, my phone usually worked and I had a ham radio. I used Bubbler on my phone for tracking. Then I started getting farther out into the hinterlands and there was no cellphone or ham radio repeater coverage. While Bubbler is supposed to store a lot of waypoints with the paid version there were often gigantic holes in the data sent to Spotwalla.

For my piece of mind I bought a Garmin inReach Plus for the tracking and two way messages before going to Canada last summer. Didn't take too long to get it working with Spotwalla. I went Hyder, Watson Lake, Fort Laird, Fort Nelson, and back down through Calgary. Once I left the major cities I was out of cellphone range. The inReach never missed a tracking point the entire trip. Bubbler and the phone being out of range were essentially worthless until I would get to a hotel and connect to WiFi. Many times Bubbler wasn't as accurate as I would have liked.

Family and friends told me they used the inReach Spotwalla link because it was more accurate. Everybody felt better that I was moving and not stuck somewhere. Knowing I could push a button in an emergency and had two way messaging made the trip less stressful. The phone with Bubbler is a nice backup, I prefer using the inReach for tracking after using it several more times on trips.

I compared both Spot and inReach plans along with coverage and other features. For my purposes it costs me $28 a month for the inReach Recreation Plan and I'm happy with it.