Believe it or not, before phones had GPS, I actually had a decent sense of direction 😆 (now, I can’t get out of a paper bag without GPS)
It’s got a map app and GPS which seem to work. I did replace the stock Google Maps with Organic Maps, though. Haven’t tested it beyond plotting a course to the grocery store, but that worked well enough. For the purposes of my experiment, I don’t consider that cheating since I did have maps/navigation/GPS on my flip phones in the past (though they relied on cell towers for positioning).
I figure if I commit to the dumb phone life, I’ll grab a dedicated GPS unit for my car like I used to have (assuming those still exist).
Might even consider getting a cheap Android phone and using it as an in-car navigation/music system. Then get a plan like https://tello.com that lets you pay $5/mo for just 1G of data. Idk how much it costs now adays, but I remember needing to pay for map updates on those dedicated GPS systems, so the cost may be comparable to keep a fully updated map, plus you get traffic and music with a phone.
I do have a house full of old Android phones, lol. Rather than piling up in a drawer, a while back I re-purposed them into IP phones and keep one in each room. I suppose I could part with one haha.
There are some offline map programs that work well, but I’m not sure if the routing works offline or not. I did learn recently that many contemporary “dumb” phones can do wifi hotspot, so that’s always an option if I do need to give it internet for navigation.
This is an intriguing idea, but how do you navigate to new places? Surely not MapQuest?
Believe it or not, before phones had GPS, I actually had a decent sense of direction 😆 (now, I can’t get out of a paper bag without GPS)
It’s got a map app and GPS which seem to work. I did replace the stock Google Maps with Organic Maps, though. Haven’t tested it beyond plotting a course to the grocery store, but that worked well enough. For the purposes of my experiment, I don’t consider that cheating since I did have maps/navigation/GPS on my flip phones in the past (though they relied on cell towers for positioning).
I figure if I commit to the dumb phone life, I’ll grab a dedicated GPS unit for my car like I used to have (assuming those still exist).
Might even consider getting a cheap Android phone and using it as an in-car navigation/music system. Then get a plan like https://tello.com that lets you pay $5/mo for just 1G of data. Idk how much it costs now adays, but I remember needing to pay for map updates on those dedicated GPS systems, so the cost may be comparable to keep a fully updated map, plus you get traffic and music with a phone.
I do have a house full of old Android phones, lol. Rather than piling up in a drawer, a while back I re-purposed them into IP phones and keep one in each room. I suppose I could part with one haha.
There are some offline map programs that work well, but I’m not sure if the routing works offline or not. I did learn recently that many contemporary “dumb” phones can do wifi hotspot, so that’s always an option if I do need to give it internet for navigation.