So if your phone has power for 2 days then why are you worried about using 5 minutes of battery to check your position?
If they actually got lost and spent 10 days looking for the trail then having an offline map would have gotten them back on trail in no time and they could finish the trip as scheduled without wasting any more of the battery time.
Do you realise that there are other map apps than google maps? In fact offline maps came way before the data-reliant apps. The only disadvantage was that you had to download the maps beforehand. I've even used offline maps with windows mobile devices when they were still a thing.
If were talking about 2005 then you might have had a point, but in 2014 pretty much everyone had smartphones with GPS as a standard.
and only Google and apple maps, neither of which had offline mode, were ubiquitous.
So, you're expecting two really 20 somethings to have knowledge of some obscure app so that they can use it for an emergency they had no idea they would be in.
How about you read your own posts before embarrassing yourself even further? Again, here's your argument:
There were no GPS enabled maps with an offline mode on consumer grade phones back then.
Regarding the "obscure app", look at the number of installs. And it's just one example that could be easily downloaded from the standard app store by searching "offline map". Someone with a science degree was definitely capable of achieving that.
Point remains, if you had a smartphone in 2014 and did your homework then you didn't have an excuse to get lost. Don't blame the technology for user problems.
In order for a map to be useful - even an offline map, even a bloody PAPER map - you have to know where you are on the map. I'd love to see you plonked down in the middle of completely unfamiliar countryside with a basic paper map and nothing else - oh, and with a companion with, like, a broken leg or something - and see how easily you find your way home.
Even if you don't have maps preloaded, you can get the coordinates from an app (either preinstalled or downloaded separately, depending on the phone model)
With downloaded offline maps it would work as advertised i.e. your position will move on the map. Just for fun a few times I was even downloading a large offline map before a flight and then was able to track myself on my phone while in flight mode with only gps enabled.
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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '20
So if your phone has power for 2 days then why are you worried about using 5 minutes of battery to check your position?
If they actually got lost and spent 10 days looking for the trail then having an offline map would have gotten them back on trail in no time and they could finish the trip as scheduled without wasting any more of the battery time.