As with any smartphone product being marketed for use in wilderness environments, a note of caution is necessary. Rescue services have seen an increasing number of life-threatening situations caused by the unwise use of smartphones. Phones aren't sufficiently rugged and often lack user-replaceable batteries, so cannot be relied upon as a navigation tool or as a means of emergency communication. If you're considering…
I agree it's foolish to do a dangerous trip with just one navigation method. But that doesn't mean your phone isn't a good tool, or that we'd have less emergencies if they didn't exist. I develop an app called Gaia GPS, which a vast array of backpackers, wildland firefighters, and SAR use as a tool to navigate in the woods. They use battery packs and rugged/insulating cases with their iPhone and Android devices to ma…
The initial maps download at home took a really long time, but I just put a phone on charger and allowed it to take time.
I love how it allows me to quickly create waypoints, so I marked my track manually every hour instead of using automated tracking. This helped a lot to conserve the battery life.