Hello all,
I have recently come to be in charge of getting a hand held gps for my father for Christmas.
  It is usually a fun task to tech out everything, but when it comes to these units I am lost. The unit we are replacing is a garmin 48 which worked fine in its day , but for some reason it thinks it is still in 1995 so it never can aquire satellites.  Any suggestions or personal experience you guys and gals have with these units fill me in,  So far I have looked at delorome and Garmin and like them both but they both have down sides, ( it seems as if Garmin is not compatable with outside mapping programs so you have to pay through the nose for lake maps for instance, the Deloromes are good units but supposedly run slow due to the way it receives its data, and eats through batteries/   so far I know I would like something that is WAAS enabled (for a little extra in the accuracy department), can be expandable with a memory card, and or accepts some kind of lake maps either on card or by USB.  so far I seem to like the lake and fishing maps from Navionics, as they seem to have superior detail over hotspots, any other suggestions would be great,, We are going to use this most likely in the midwest  (WI, MI,MN) most of the time so that is all the lake map coverage I am looking for.  There are so many units out there my head is sppinning, and frankly the lake maps supporting software is more than vague on what untis are supported other than boat dash mounted units.

again any help would help greatly,  looking for a great unit for the big fishing trips to new lakes, but portable enough to throw it in your pocket to get back from an extended hunt in unfamiliar woods with large tracts of land.

waiting for your feedback, scratching my head at the growing amount of units I have specs for in front of me.
thanks,

Andy

thanks in advance again for any info you have

I'm not that up on hand helds but I know that Lowrance makes a good one and I believe it is WAAS enabled. My GPS unit is a Lowrance 332c mounted in my dash I bought the Navonics sd card ot western US and the maps are pretty accurate. I'm not sure if they have it in the hand helds but you can check them out at lowrance.com.
Hope this helps.

Harry

Look into an Android phone that runs Navionics lake maps and related programs. Standalone GPS handheld equipment is already outdated, most of us carrying a cell phone already. 

I think with all my research I was looking at the Garmin oregon 450t, it seems to have everything also upon my research I found that the navionics mapping program is cool and all and very accurate maps, however the software can not be "marked" in a GPS. It is more of a pull up map, and in order to save a waypoint you have to back out of the map to your general navigation screen and mark it there, then there is no indication of being on a mark when you are in the maps. which is leading my decisiion as well. Anyone have any experience with this unit or any units in the oregon or dakota series from Garmin?

This is actually old news. For the sake of anyone interested in the alternative I posted, the program is resident and you can directly save waypoints, save routes, do whatever you know to do with a dedicated GPS hand-held. Even without GPS Nav running on my phone I can make a waypoint on a general map based on cell tower triangulation. I am running Google maps and get live accurate positions without GPS. What to watch out for is to get a phone model that allows night screen dimming, and allows the screen to stay lit longer than what most of us are used to on a cell phone. Navionics Mobile is no less a product than their boat navigation versions, showing the minute one foot gradient contours where that detail applies. I'm considering upgrading to the next generation of Android then install the Mobile. I'm actually suspecting all that might be included if Navionics and Google team up. The Navionics Mobile data is readable on your Google maps already.

Jim

The android sounds good.  Is the GPS nav totally stand alone i.e. only needs satellite signal?  A lot of lakes that I fish have areas with no cell reception, so the cell tower triangulation wouldn't work.  I also assume that Google wouldn't work if there is no cell signal reception.  Is that correct?  Thanks for the info.

Many high end phones other than just Android have GPS nav included, requiring satellites like a Garmin does. However, sometimes my Garmin loses too many satellites at times my cell phone can still find towers. With three towers able to ping my current phone I can get the land-based position with amazing accuracy. Keeping a tower in "view" I get Internet, so get Google maps. The Navionics software sales guy here thinks they have joined the two so the software can use the phone's land based position to verify the GPS position, increasing accuracy and reliability. He'll find out for sure. All that assures me the phone choice is superior to any GPS hand-held, equal in GPS capability, both looking for the same satellites, but the phone can nail a position if the phone is receiving signals. Look for a Navionics dealer at a sports store who should be able to advise you. They can advise which latest phone model to get.

I won't give up my boat equipment, needing the larger screen and hands=free feature.

Make Dad happy!

Jim

I would hesitate to buy a GPS/Smartphone for outdoor use. The GPS/Phones I have been exposed to are not suitable for off road and marine navigation. I use a Lowrance H2Oc handheld which has a slot for a memory card and will also run all the maping programs that I use on my combo sonar/GPS (also a Lowrance) and is also WAAS capable. It sure isn't the only good unit on the market but after owning 2 Magellans and a Garmin handheld, I prefer the H2O. The Garmin unit my wife uses in the car is fine, but lake maps for Garmin are hard to come by and expensive and lack the fine detail of the Fishing Hot Spots chips. The H2O is also submersible which can't be said for many phones. Tom

Thank you all for your responses. I took all you comments ot heart, and as to the phone system, I already have that, the problem comes in as Pegsguy indicated. I also ran int a huge surcharge on my cell bill this year because we were up at lake kabetogama and picking up Ontario cell towers without my knowledge with the use of google maps it racked up around $700 in charges, luckily I was able to argue my way out of the bill due to the fact that I never left the "coverage area" which stops at the boarder without control of what towers my phone connects to. A tip if you are going on a trip that is going to be harboring on the edge of your cell phone plan ( like nation wide and the boarder in my case) call your service provider before hand, as I found out in the resolution of my bill, if you call before they can add minutes to your account ( my service does this free of charge) with international earmarks so that extra charges will not be applied. but for next year a handheld GPS will be the key, also it looks as if my parents are going to get into geo caching, we hunt and they do a lot of travel as well, so in our case I think the handheld is the real fit, but I agree there are other systems that can be used that are just as good it just has to fit your purpose and lifestyle.

thanks again guys.

I left my new H2O in a cup holder in the boat while inside the marina after some peanuts, returned to find it gone. I've also let two cell phones fall overboard, teaching me not to leave it in a shirt pocket. But that didn't stop me from having a cell phone while on the water. They've been rained on briefly without causing problems, but maybe I was just lucky. While in Buffalo NY on a trip there I noticed my phone was roaming, so I called Cus Service, learning Canada is supposed to be honoring a roaming contract with Verizon. My bill is always the same.

I hope this thread helps some folks muddle through the same task, choosing what to carry. I bought a bracket for my phone so it will sit on the dash while on a trip, so the Tom Tom will be retired when I learn better how the phone nav deal works. When fishing or hunting, camping, etc. I will carry only one electronics gadget, the phone, which does more and more monthly it seems, with the costs going down too.

Jim

Jim did any fish call you lol. I did the same thing with a cell phone. Had it my shirt pocket, bent over to net a walleye, kerplunk right in the lake.

If you take a look in any of the major retailer's catalogs you will notice that they sell shirts with a button down flap on the pocket. Tends to keep in stuff that you want to hang on to! Tom

Tom believe it or not the shirt I was wearing did infact have a botton donw flap on the pocket, like a dummy I for got to button it. Hense the kurplunk.

Yep, I figure those occasional "bad connections" with hissing and gurgles must be some fish trying to send me a message. Both times I was wearing my "signature" Cabelas SPF50 longsleeved shirts with plenty of Velcro pockets. I don't like shutting them, as when the phone rings I seem programmed to drop everything and answer it. With the Velcro closed my response time is dramatically impaired. So I bend over like that to retrieve a fish and get that sinking feeling. I smoked years ago and always hoped it was the phone, not my one and only pack added to D. Jones' locker. Nowadays losing a phone is quite a more miserable experience for having to re-load programs, files and contact list.

Jim