Another useful gizmo.

I’ve just had a play about with this cable, linking my Samsung Galaxy S4 (Android) to my Garmin Oregon 450.

The phone recognises the Oregon and its SD card as external drives, and so allows me to browse the two drives, add, move, delete and relocate files.

I can’t use the ‘Download to GPS’ command from the cache listing pages or pop up windows on the cache map, in Chrome, my browser of choice, as it’s saying my browser doesn’t support the Garmin Communicator plug in.

I haven’t tried any other mobile browsers, yet, although I suspect the answer is probably going to be the same.

I can add caches to my GPS from my phone by downloading them and then using the file manager to cut and paste them to the Oregon or its memory card.

The only disadvantages I’ve found from this first brief play around are: -

• The phone appears to power the GPS whilst it’s connected (although at one stage the GPS did ask me ‘Continue using external power?’, so I selected ‘No’).

• When linked to the phone, it creates the directories ‘LOST.DIR’ and ‘Android’ on both the GPS and its memory card. These don’t appear to affect the operation of the GPS (I’ve rebooted it with both left on, in both locations). Obviously, if you want to, they can be deleted using your phone’s file manager.

Whilst I can use the phone app I do find the GPS better, so this is a useful way of getting new caches or any I want to try and find whilst I’m off my usual ‘patch’ over to the GPS.

I can’t see any reason why this wouldn’t work for transferring pocket queries from your hone to your GPS.