Thread: Best GPS mobile phone map apps

Interested to hear what’s the best app people are using for GPS maps

NZ TOPO50 is what I use. Buy either the North or South Island, have the whole island downloaded on your phone. Pretty cheap too

Nz topo 50 for me NI and SI.

I find maps good but mostly use it to check boundaries with the doc overlay And standalone gps for navigation and tracking .

What stug said. Have NZ Topo50, Avenza and Memory-Map on my phone. Use NZ Topo50 mostly for logging daily tracks and animals for DOC or Landowners. Have tried lots of others such as iHike etc. and discarded. These two do everything I need with adequate resolution when zoomed in. I have MM on phone as it matches the same program on my computer. Also use Avenza as I can load geotagged pdf maps from DOC, Forestry companies and District Council.

Originally Posted by woods223

What stug said. Have NZ Topo50, Avenza and Memory-Map on my phone. Use NZ Topo50 mostly for logging daily tracks and animals for DOC or Landowners. Have tried lots of others such as iHike etc. and discarded. These two do everything I need with adequate resolution when zoomed in. I have MM on phone as it matches the same program on my computer. Also use Avenza as I can load geotagged pdf maps from DOC, Forestry companies and District Council.

Need to get topo50 but also using Avenza maps at the moment for work which are excellent with all those extra details I need

Its NZ topo 50 for me NI and SI. Easy to use accurate and you can add layers such a DOC hunting blocks etc. Just back from being in the Temple-Maitland block, app was great the weather was windy wet but not cold.

NZTopo50 user here too.
The aerial view isn't flash but I think if you zoom in full at home, then it caches some of that data.
Does everything I need. If you check out some of the howto information https://nztopo50.sqrl.net/ then it's pretty handy for stuff like uploading routes etc.
Still amazes me just how good the gps receiver on a phone is compared to dedicated gps units. Well, that's my experience so far.

NZ Topo 50 is great - also use Pocket Maps from Walking Access. Has various layers inc some pretty good aerial imagery. Best of all it is free.

Nz Topo 50. Recording your track in featureless bush is a game changer and is surprisingly accurate. If your phone reckons the spot you are looking for is right there, it is.

I run my phone on airplane mode when hunting, will go 2 or 3 days easy.

Yep, another NZ Topo50 user here. It’s fantastic. I started out using Maptoaster years ago but that was rubbish by comparison. NZ Topo 50 is super easy to use. I love being able to use different symbols for different waypoints, so when looking at my map I know instantly whether the point I’ve saved is a wallow, campsite, game trail or whatever. The GPS is really accurate- have fun it side by side against standalone gps units and found it as accurate.

Being able to overlay the DOC boundaries is fantastic. But, for your own protection I’d recommend not relying only on it for your boundaries. The main DOC block I hunt had a small change about a year ago where DOC changed one basin from being open hunting to prohibited hunting. I’ve hunted that exact basin before and had been planning a hunt into that area, but noticed a few days beforehand that it had changed on the maps on the DOC website. Took about 3 calls to their offices to get an answer about what had changed. That boundary change is reflected on Topo50 now, but it wasn’t updated immediately.

NZ Topo 50- the guy who does it is really good to work with and he's got a layer set up with legal access to some obscure public blocks which is handy with the tracking feature on a cellphone.

NZ topo 50 for me now, it works but everytime i use it i miss fatmaps so much

NZ Topo 50,track your self across a river in day time,follow yr track back at 2am.Very accurate,record yr track for the next trip.Use it for rangeing yr deer from where you shot it to where its lays dead.If im away for 2 days,i just leave tracker running all the time.makes for interesting reading when you get home.

Same as others NZtopo50 SI

After reading this thread, I downloaded the TOP50 app. Is genuinely simple to use and gives all the detail I need.

I had been using the Plan My Walk app, which is a useful extra as it provides more detail about the areas / huts / tracks etc.