Garmin Launches Official OpenCaching Clients for iPhone and Android

When OpenCaching.com launched, one of the big questions on everyone’s mind was – Will Garmin support non-Garmin devices on the site? Today we have an answer: Yes, yes they will.

Garmin has launched official geocaching clients for the OpenCaching.com site today for iPhone and Android based devices. Since I use an iPhone, the screenshots are from that version. All the usual features one would expect are here in the app.

You can lookup caches (50 at a time), navigate to them via map or compass, log them or …. hide caches. Yes I just said hide caches. While Groundspeak has the idea of hiding a cache with your smartphone  ”under consideration” (or do they?) … , Garmin – a GPS company – is enabling people to create or even publish caches from their smartphones while in the field. The app does indicate position error when grabbing the co-ords, but it remains to be seen whether we’ll see a lot of inaccurate placements, better than expected smartphone GPS performance, or simply people using the app to mock up their cache listings to be finished later. There’s nothing stopping a person from submitting this as a “Draft” to OpenCaching then just copying that info over to Geocaching.com as well.

The app also includes a “Guide” so you have the Opencaching guidelines right there in the field. Handy when you’re thinking about a placement, and aren’t sure if that would be allowed.

Multi caches are supported as well, you can create additional waypoints for a cache from the compass screen – click the waypoint symbol with the + on it in the top right, and carry on caching.

You can mark caches as Favorites (not Favourites in Canada ….) and you have a “Logbook” icon where you can see all your log entries to date.