Reduce, reuse and Re Cycle

Most people (me included) whenever approach a more ecological life style just think about buying.
Buying new and more ecological stuff. Kind of going backwards right?
That's it, if we want to be more ecological we must follow the 3R rule: reduce, reuse and recycle.
And in my opinion by this same order.
Due to my passion about bikes, riding bikes and being outdoor I was lurking a new GPS unit, since my Suunto Ambit 2 has very limited navigation capabilities.
As anyone would do, I went and search what the market has to offer and how much would it cost.
Most of this equipments cost about 180-200eur or more.
I decided to try another route. The 3 R Route.
First I evaluated how much I needed a navigation equipment: well I have my suunto watch wich can read routes but don't have maps. I have my iPhone, which has maps, and to be fair those will do for 90% of my outdoor adventures, so I decided I don't really need that gps navigation equipment so much.
Still, I wanted to be on the safe side when outdoors. Gps+phone+data in one device means low battery in a short time, and what I don't want is to be without phone to contact anyone if needed.
There are many paths possible to solve this issue, if one really wants to use his phone:
-Using a powerbank - for most of us means buying one, so I try to rulle out this option. You can always ask someone to lend you one, or to give you one of those freebies. But still I am kinda against this option.
-Taking a second phone, if possible a basic one. I guess everyone has a basic one laying around! This was a nice option, but I kinda preserve my iPhone and don't want it to be exposed to hours on the sun, damaging battery in the long run.

So I decide to take another route: turning old smartphones that I had laying around (from family members and friends) into gps navigation devices.
In my case they were 7-8 year old devices like the original Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and HTC Incredible S, both powered by 1GHz single core processors and whopping 512-768mb of ram.
After a factory reset I installed GPS Status to help finding gps sattelites faster and test their gps functionality.
I installed Codesector Maverick, in fact Maverick Pro Version (paid version to help the development) and with this app I could load track (gpx) and download maps at home.
I went on a small test and it seemed satisfactory. I had some problems with Maverick (map/route orientation) and I couldn't get an answer from the devs.
Also I noted that battery life of this smartphones and not that good, and in the case of the samsung the gps reception either.
I decided to mitigate this problems the following way:
-App: Orux Maps, in my case the older 6.5.10 version worked better.
-GPS: Nokia LD-3W GPS Module

Orux Maps has lots of functionality and works as good as maverick. I am still learning to deal with it, but at least I have friends that confirmed me it has no problem with orientation and map downloading.
About the Nokia LD-3W bluetooth gps module. As many tech guys may know, back in the Feature phone days you bought this to have gps on your phone. So many people have them laying around, and most will sell you one as low as 5-10eur.
What are the advantages? GPS Work is done by this device and not by your phone and the precision is much better (in case of old phoneS). I already had this laying around. I suggest you to only buy one if really needed (latter I will try to test batterylife with internal gps and with external gps).
Well now I just needed a mount for the bike, I searched for used ones (smartphones get so big that users must sell the old mounts) but they were more expensive than one in decathlon outlet (my bad buying new stuff, but still better than going to waste land or buying a new gps device).

After that I just loaded the GPX route, download the map using wifi (zoom levels between 11 and 16 on maverick) and all I can say is that it worked more or less good in my 200kms ride.
The bluetooth connection between the Nokia module and phone failed sometimes (I guess it may be some powersaving feature of maverick, will test it further with orux also) but I found it satisfactory.
If you have a more recent smartphone laying with stronger gps signals I guess you won't have any problems.
All in all I got a "good" gps for about 10eur (the price of the mount). Even if it is no garmin, it will help and it will not go to the wasteland =)
All in all, reduce, reuse and re-cycle!