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Comment by dev_tty01 | Hacker News Reader

Off topic, but this really struck a chord. I arrive at the trailhead for an afternoon of mountain biking in the mountains. I can't record the ride route because my mountain bike specific trail/ride logging app can't get an internet connection to log me in. I don't want to be logged in. I just want to record GPS over time. No maps needed. No server access needed. I guess they never thought someone might want to mountain bike in the mountains! Sorry, but that is an idiotic design decision. Unfortunately, this approach to "personal" computing has become the norm rather than an exception. People are not allowed to exist on their own.

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...then use a different app. There are myriad ways to record rides with no data service; I do it all the time. Most commonly I use Strava or a dedicated Garmin bike computer.

Syncing / uploading then happens once they have signal again. Or in the case of the Garmin I copy the FIT file off by hand when plugging it into my computer.

I think that by the time you're at the top of a mountain without cell service, you're already locked in to an app that won't let you record your position.

So your solution for a software problem is buying more hardware. Companies must love you.

I don't think that was the point at all, the point was that if your app doesn't let you record your track without internet connection, then it's on that specific app (and eventually it's on you if you stick with such an app).

There are many apps that let you track your run/hike/ride without internet connection.

You got it; the point is that it's a one-time problem after which a different app should be chosen. There's a ton of things out there which'll record rides offline.

Personally, I think a dedicated bike computer is best, because then the phone's battery is saved for emergency uses instead of recording a ride. For long rides (8-10 hour) phones won't have enough battery to record the whole ride.

Some people like the interface/extra features of an app. I tried going from google maps to open street maps, and came back in 5 minutes flat.

I don't know if companies love him but I know Strava is an android app.

An android app is software.

Not hardware.

What new hardware are you referring to?

I record GPX with OSMAnd+ running on my older and smaller Android phone. No SIM, no Bluetooth, only GPS. It goes on all day long. Then I send it to my new phone or to my computer over WiFi. If I were in the mountains I'd turn on hot spot mode on the phone to make the transfer work.

No log in, no external services.

It's exactly why I quit using fitbit 4 or 5 years ago when they made a similar change. There should be 0 reason for needing an internet connection to send data from a wristband 2 feet away to my phone using bluetooth in order to tell me how many feet I've traveled. That may have changed since then but I wouldn't know. They lost me as a customer.

You made the mistake of thinking an app's functionality is it's purpose. The functionality is just a thin veneer of an excuse the devs use to track your every moment. Why would you think otherwise?

Even if it cost money to install, you are just paying for the privilege of being tracked by those folks instead of others.

#appsnotevenonce

Any good FOSS exercise monitoring apps?

Some great offline GPS (cell-free) map apps for Apple iOS are

- Sygic,

- Topo Map+,

- 2GIS

- Starwalk - Night Sky 2

- and my fav, Genius Map

all works without WiFi, cell coverage, nor NFC/bluetooth

Also maps.me

Maps.me started to implement some monetisation UI bloat a while ago. I swapped to organic maps. Can’t remember if it’s a fork or by one of the old maps.me developers but there was some connection.

Is it possible to migrate saved-places from MM to OM ?

...and yet, we're hitting to the same wall again:

Hardware is cheap, network is reliable. Move fast and break things.

Neither of these assumptions are true, and we're going to have these issues by truckload, until we understand and change our mindset.

Hamburg, Germany: the public transport services released a new app a few months ago which assumes that the request failed when the app has not finished receiving an answer to a route query after a given time span. The problem: It is normal to have a data cap that, when reached, limits the rate to 64 kbit/s. That is too slow for the answer to be fully transmitted in time...

At least the website works, even though it transmits the full site for every request...

Did this happen with Strava? My usual morning MTB lap has no cell service at the trailhead and it’s never been an issue. But I’ve also never found myself logged out before.

The PADI (suba diving) app barely works without constant internet connection, especially eLearning is useless with it once you are offline / have a shaky connection.

Scuba diving spots on the world are rarely well covered with internet and even if they are, still many people don't have the roaming/local SIM solution for it.

Guess where you want to use that damn app the most?

You can’t add a password to Bitwarden while being offline.

Discovered this when I tried to add a WiFi password before connecting to it.

Strava doesn't require an internet connection (at least on Apple watch). For maps, Trailforks supports offline mode.

Strava doesn't need a connection on Android either.

For android users, Strava makes things easy, but OsmAnd has way more features and I like it a lot more.

I use GPSLogger that saves my ride to a GPX file that can then be imported wherever you want.

Yeh I hit that too! If it’s the same app their business model is to charge for offline use.

Not a great way to get new customers though as it requires missing out on logging a ride to become aware of a reason to buy.

The massive 5G infrastructure push should help deal with some of you “occasionally offline” dissidents

How so? I thought 5G is mostly coming to densely populated areas, that is, areas that already have decent connectivity. Also, at least currently, I thought 5G is a developed country thing. Lots of folks are still running off 3G.

Huh, almost seems like 5G is marketing bullshit? The primary goal of 5G being to goad and shame consumers into upgrading a perfectly capable older phone to a new phone that is “5G ready”

I'm very excited to have gigabit download speeds so I can hit my hidden "unlimited" undescribed quota within a minute while also permanently having hotspot throttled to 128kbps.

There still likely won't be towers in the mountains or backcountry.

I'm very excited to heqr the plan for locating 5G towers in the ocean, in remote wilderness sites, in underground facilities, the Antarctic, etc. People visit these sites and expect their tech to work fine as long as it doesnt obviously require a network connection. Of course I can't browse HN from those places, but my otherwise self contained apps should continue to run predictably.

The higher frequencies of 5G are even more easily blocked by outdoorsy things like trees and rain.

No, if anything it will be harder to connect rural areas with 5G. 4G’s coverage is measured in miles. 5G’s coverage is measured in feet.

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-does-5g-reach

> 5G Ultra Wideband network’s signal can reach up to 1,500 feet without obstructions

You're quoting something about “5G Ultra Wideband”, which seems to be a brand name for mmWave. Yes, mmWave has very short range. But 5G isn't just mmWave. It's in many ways an evolution of LTE/4G, supporting the same frequencies and offering the same range, i.e. multiple km/miles. But it's up to carriers how they allocate their frequencies. To quote Wikipedia:

> 5G can be implemented in low-band, mid-band or high-band millimeter-wave 24 GHz up to 54 GHz. Low-band 5G uses a similar frequency range to 4G cellphones, 600–900 MHz, giving download speeds a little higher than 4G: 30–250 megabits per second (Mbit/s). Low-band cell towers have a range and coverage area similar to 4G towers.

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G#Overview

5G is _perfect_ for providing coverage in rural areas, except for the problem that 4G devices are incompatible with 5G networks. Starting 5G rollout in urban areas makes more sense because (a) 5G provides most benefit when clients are close together, and (b) because denser cells make it reasonably economical to maintain 4G coverage in parallel to 5G coverage.

That's a fair point -- that the tech is capable of supporting it. I could be wrong, but in the near term I don't recall any US carriers proposing to allocate any low-band spectrum that way.

Either way, if we're talking about "coverage" for low-bandwidth stuff like fitness trackers, it's the spectrum that matters more than anything. We can communicate thousands of miles on 1 or 2 watts of LF spectrum using technology that is nearly a century old. Don't need 5G for that, just need to use the right spectrum.

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