New Geocaching iPhone App. Version Released

You may have noticed that Grounspeak released version 2.1 of their Geocaching iPhone/iPodTouch application this week. If you're not familiar with this tool, you can read more about it here, or, visit the Apple iTunes Store download page.

Some of the features added to this latest version include:

• Updated user interface.
  
• Three different map options now available: Street, Topo, and Satellite.
• For each map type, you can select the map source.
• Custom waypoints can be added to the navigation map - a must for multi-caches.
• Your active pocket queries can be downloaded to your device and accessed while you are outside of network coverage!
  

That last bullet is my favorite, especially since I have an iPodTouch and not an iPhone. I usually bring the Touch with me when I'm out caching, but only to listen to music. Up until now, it had no real caching capabilities since the only way I could get geocaching or navigation information was if I happened to be near a wi-fi hot spot. I can't think of too many caching locations I've been to where a wi-fi signal was available.

But now that I can download my pocket queries to the device, I may start using the iPodTouch more than my current smartphone/cachemate solution. Following are some screenshots of the new pocket query feature on the iPodTouch:

 New Interface With Pocket Query Option

  List Of My Active Pocket Queries

 

Selected Pocket Query Ready to Download

 

 

List of Saved Pocket Queries on Device

Cache List From Selected Pocket Query

(each one contains all the cache info.)

The other nice thing is that downloading the pocket queries to the Touch goes much faster than loading them into cachemate on my smartphone. My only complaint so far is that not all of my pocket queries show up on the active list in my device, and I haven't figured out why that is.

But for now, this is good enough to start testing to decide if it will become my new paperless caching solution. Stay tuned.

Cache On!