A review of iMapMyRide for the iPhone

On the recommendation of fellow cyclist Brian Sheridan who I met at SXSW (the conference that keeps on giving) I downloaded the iMapMyRide iPhone app last weekend to track my latest jaunt out on the bike.

I’ve been a cyclist for about 20 years and have used many different handlebar mounted computers over that time. These show all the predictable stuff like trip distance, average speed, current speed, overall distance, pedal cadence and a few other things. All measured by magnets on the wheels and sensors attached to the frame. I’ve even used heart rate monitors when I was really serious (and fit).

But this iMapMyRide app takes geekyness + sport to a new level.

There are two versions of the app. The free and the paid for. I opted for the paid for version which provides the facility to listen to music while the app is running, the ability to take geo-tagged pictures en-route and is ad-free. And, at £2.99, it’s less than the price of a new inner tube.

After installation I created an account on the site through the app, hit start and was warned that it couldn’t find accurate GPS data. But as I moved outside the house the signal became stronger, it pinpointed my position, and off I went. All very straightforward.

It’s worth pointing out that playing music isn’t as straightforward as you would imagine. You have to effectively ‘import’ the music you want to listen to into the iMapMyRide app. It takes a bit of scrolling and clicking, but it does work. A nice work-around for the lack of background processing on the iPhone.

So what’s it like?

Well, as you can imagine it is very dependent on your network GPS coverage. Over the course of my 50 mile ride on Saturday it became a little sketchy in a couple of places suggesting, for example, that I rode across the wet bit of the Thames rather than using the very lovely Hammersmith bridge. That’s probably more of an O2 network coverage issue that the app’s fault.

One other issue I’ve heard of is that if you are called while the app is running it kills that app. Didn’t happen to me but according to the FAQs you have to remember, on ending the call, to go back into the app. and hit ‘resume’. That should all go away with iPhone OS 4.0, however, and the background processing abilities of the new OS.

Unsurprisingly too, it eats through the battery. I started out with a completely charged battery on a 10 month old phone and after three and a half hours of continuous use with music playing I was down to around 40%.

Vital statistics

It’s at the end of your ride that it gets interesting with all the lovely data it provides. I can look at distance covered, average speed as mph or as minutes per mile, total time and calories burned.

It also has the ride altitude profile with cumulative height gained and lost – all downloadable as Google Earth .kml files. It plots my route onto a Google map view and allows me, via the site, to add notes along the route.

Talking of the site. All the data is logged on my profile. I can choose to make the route private or public, allowing others to comment and rate my route.

One lovely feature is the ability to view a video fly-by of a ride. It’s a bit clunky if you don’t have a very fast connection but a lovely touch. Go and take a look. (Hit the ‘Watch Course Fly-By Video’ button)

No connection, no data

I tried the app again on Sunday on a short 20 mile couple-of-lap jaunt round Richmond Park in south west London. Compare and contrast the route plotting accuracy when in an area with poor GPS coverage. Bear in mind that the lap was round the perimeter for the park.

Other stuff

If you use it for commuting it has some nice stats on the site about estimated CO² reduction and money saved on petrol – averaged out for fuel consumption and cost of petrol (all US centric though).

As far as the site is concerned, the UX needs a lot of work. It’s a densely packed mass of links, buttons and other extraneous fluff and visual noise. Quite indecipherable and complicated for what is, in essence, a simple set of features and functions.

All in all, it’s added a new dimension to getting out on my bike. I’m already thinking of all the things I can do with the data I collect over the summer months. Data viz anyone?

All I need to do now is get that 50 mile time under 3 hours.

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UPDATE: 7 June 2010

I downloaded and trialled Cyclemeter over the weekend. Where MapMyRide is a little ugly and clunky, Cyclemeter is beautifully designed and elegant. It handles dropped GPS connections better ie. it seems to pick it up again when available and tells you for how long it had a weak connection.

The UI is lovely and it provides loads of split time data. So, for each mile of my ride I know average speed, maximum speed, total ride time, calories burned and number of feet climbed. The CSV file export is epic. All rides are displayed on a calendar with little icons showing if my repeat rides are better or worse than my previous attempts at the same route.

After a number of disappointing rides where very little data was collected using MapMyRide, I’m now relying on Cyclemeter to indulge my bike ride data appetite.