Originally Posted By: 123Saab
Originally Posted By: bubbatime
Try to drive around the great smokey mountains with a phone based GPS. There are hundreds of square miles with no cell towers at all. You will have zero maps the entire time, and a functionally useless GPS. The old fashioned GPS will work fine. I have a prepared mindset, so I keep a spare in the glove box at all times. its a backup to the car GPS, which is a backup to the phone GPS.
If your phone has a GPS chip it will not have any issues as long as it can see a satellite.
Negative. Most phones download the map via data as they are used. Not all phones have the maps already installed on the phone. So while almost all phones have a "GPS Chip" in them that could probably tell you your lat/long, that's about useless if your phone doesn't have a map to go along with it. No service, no downloaded map, no GPS navigation. Yes I am aware that you can download the maps to your phone, but that takes forethought, and probably most people would not know how to do that, and wouldn't do that. Expecting their phone to work, and get a nasty surprise when they are without any form of working GPS.
A used $50 GPS in the glove box (or an old fashioned paper map) can be a life saver.