iPhone OutDoors Top Tips

Top Tips for Enjoying your iPhone OutDoors

1. Turn off Wifi, Bluetooth and 3G as a matter of course both to save battery and also you'll find tiles display faster (you'll still be able to use the phone when 3G is turned off).
2. Set Auto-lock (see settings) to 1 minute.
3. A Kennington Charger will give your 3-4 times as much battery life if you’re going on a long trip. We recommend buying one; great for long car, train or plane journeys too.
4. We built OutDoors to help people enjoy the great British Outdoors. The goal is to reduce the amount of time you need to stare at maps!  So, fascinating though OS Maps and Outdoors can be, pop it in your pocket for more enjoyment and a better battery life; pull it out when unsure about the next steps. 
5. Buy an Otterbox to protect your device when on a walk; it’s virtually water proof and extremely hardy. You can still use your iPhone’s touchscreen and ports (sound, power, audio).
6. iPhones can slow down over time if you never turn them off. So we recommend an occasional reboot or even better, download the superb app, Memory Sweep (free), which will clear more memory for faster performance.
7. If you’re conserving iPhone disk space, you can uninstall OutDoors and re-install later anytime. You’ll lose your walks but you can store these on the web and download them in seconds anyway.
8. Although it is very easy to plan and build a route on OutDoors, it can be faster to do so at your desk with the benefit of a big screen. There are dozens of such systems available on the internet for building routes (in GPX format); one of the best being EveryTrail. You can import and export from Everytrail in seconds if you have your walks on some other system.
9. It is important to only Import trusted walks and rides from EveryTrail. Some people use EveryTrail to experiment with very long journeys with thousands of waypoints which might affect the performance of your iPhone, if downloaded.
10. We suggest you store all your routes on EveryTrail and then pull down the ones you need occasionally.
11. GPS does use up your battery more quickly. Viewing the map with Airplane mode on (see settings) will make a big difference- although you'll not be able to see your current position, since Airplane mode shuts down GPS. Turning Airplane mode on when you're confident of your route, is a good way to make sure you get a full day's use out of your iPhone.
12. Installation of a large app is much quicker if there is plenty of available memory on the device. A reboot or app such as Memory Sweep will make the installation faster by clearing up your memory.