GPS Speedometers for the iPhone

I'm in love with AllSportGPS for my Blackberry, giving me constant speed, distance, and mapping my walks. It's not compatible with the iPhone, but iPhone users have a couple of similar choices -- probably with more on the way. RunKeeper tracks your speed and distance, and automatically uploads to the web where you can view your map. It doesn't yet have real time maps on the phone itself, which is a feature I really love with AllSportGPS. But the programmers are hard at work improving it continuously. They just added an elevation profile. I suggested they also needed to list the calories burned, as AllSportGPS does. Laura Moncur at Starling Fitness reviews the RunKeeper. The cost is only $9.99 for the download. One thing concerns me -- a report that the iPhone running RunKeeper would have only three hours of battery life. That wouldn't get most people through a marathon, even as a runner. My typical walks are over two hours, and when training for a marathon or half marathon I easily put in four or more hours. I'm happy to report that a three hour walk with my Blackberry running AllSportGPS used only a third of my battery power.

Meanwhile, MapMyWalk has been a partner with me at Walking.About.com for a couple of years, providing our Google Map Pedometer. They are soon to debut their own iPhone version, iMapMy. Out of the box, it appears to have more features than RunKeeper, such as calories burned, real-time mapping on the phone, saving and sharing features, integration with Twitter, etc. You can sign up on the iMapMy site to be notified when it is available in the Apple iPhone App Store. I also appreciate that Walk is highlighted as a choice for the kind of workout.

These apps are touted as Nike + iPod killers. But they only work with the new 3G iPhone -- not even with the original iPhone or the Touch. There are oodles of us out there who have iPod nanos for music but use a different cell phone and/or are locked into a cell phone contract with a provider who doesn't support the iPhone. Convergence is finally here -- having a phone with a mapping speedometer that plays music, audiobooks and video.
Photo courtesy of RunKeeper.