I picked up a few cheap, <$20, prepaid 3g android smartphones at Target to play with. Its a LG optimus dynamic. I don't plan on purchasing cell service so I keep them in airplane mode to save battery. The phone was crippled with a tiny ROM space, but I was easily able to root the devices, repartition the memory and load a custom ROM
One I gave to my kid to play games and music. The other, I loaded with Strava, Google MyTracks, Endomondo, a couple of free open source map navigation software. I use it to record rides for strava, turn it on and put it in baggie in my back jersey pocket. Ride data is transmitted automatically when I am in my Wifi range.
The thing works great, the battery lasts a couple of days on a charge. I bet I could fashion a decent mount for my handlebars.
This week, even better phones are on sale. One is less than <$20 (Kyocera event) and a waterproof dualcore model is just $30 (Kyocera hydro). These models should not even require any hacking to be useful. For that kind of cash, you cannot even get a decent wireless cyclecomputer.
The deals are not online, look in the store on the bottom of the phone racks.
One I gave to my kid to play games and music. The other, I loaded with Strava, Google MyTracks, Endomondo, a couple of free open source map navigation software. I use it to record rides for strava, turn it on and put it in baggie in my back jersey pocket. Ride data is transmitted automatically when I am in my Wifi range.
The thing works great, the battery lasts a couple of days on a charge. I bet I could fashion a decent mount for my handlebars.
This week, even better phones are on sale. One is less than <$20 (Kyocera event) and a waterproof dualcore model is just $30 (Kyocera hydro). These models should not even require any hacking to be useful. For that kind of cash, you cannot even get a decent wireless cyclecomputer.
The deals are not online, look in the store on the bottom of the phone racks.