I was on the lookout for a cheap android phone that runs cool to use as a nav device when dirtbike riding. Keeping my actual phone safely tucked away.
Think a rog 7 would perfect, with its dual band GPS and effective cooling, seems they may be on the list of bricked phones.
How to pickup a bargain though?
yeah, pick up an IMEI blocked phone from a second hand place. Maybe ask your friends if they got an old phone they don't want anymore.
Don't need an internet connection to use GPS navigation anyway so long as the map data is stored locally.
so long as the map data is stored locally
so long dental plan!!!
Why does it need “cooling”??
I use a phone as a GPS/Waze portal on my motorcycle and never had a problem with “overheating”.
I actually ended up buying a Hisense A5C because it has a colour E-Ink screen and is super easy to see in daylight and will go all day and still only use a fraction of battery…
It’s going to be a hard ask on Waze because I am betting it’s going to get turfed off the network any time soon, but I can still use it for offline maps if I load via wifi at home.
Note that phones tend to rely on an internet connection to assist getting an initial GPS fix. It can take a long time otherwise.
But you can use wifi for that, such as your phone's hotspot.
You've given me traumatic flashbacks to my first GPS cameras that took FOREVER to get a fix on satellites!
It may be worth looking at the GPS performance without a data connection - phones "cheat" and get data from cell towers to get a fix more quickly.
If that's not an issue, pretty much anything should be fine for that purpose.
I use an old Poco F1 for this exact thing. Works fine just using hotspot from my phone.
Recycle bin at phone shops!