I thought there was already a thread for this, but couldn't find it, definitely not recently, so I'll start a new one:
What phones you own have the best GPS quality (with Locus)?
I'm especially interested in experiences of people with several phones.
I personally have owned a bunch of Samsung Galaxys over the years - but surprisingly enough, my cheap Moto G5 has not only the best precision (although not necessarily better than the newer Samsungs), but combine that with the best battery performance by far! In flight mode, I can easily record for 6hrs and still have around 50% battery left. I'm actually not sad that my most expensive phone (Galaxy S9) is much worse in this regard, as I prefer to take another phone outdoors anyway, but it's still weird.
What are your experiences?
I have a very good experience with Samsung A3 2018, Android 8.0. In normal mode and with the internet turned on, I have 10 hours of recording. I have 30% of my time on the screen.
Biggest problem with Samsung devices is the compass.
It loses the accuracy when close to metal/magnetic objects... or when rebooting.
And it will not regain accuracy by itselves.
Do figure 8's...
You can easily check your own device by entering *#0*# in your dialer.
Magnetic Sensor should be blue with 3 indicated.
Position precision on my Note8 is very good. As is the battery time.
With a Samsung A5 I measure battery loss of ~2.5% per hour with track recording enabled. So that's ~20 hours for 50% battery loss. With navigation enabled the loss increases to ~3.5% per hour. The A5 has a proper pressure sensor which gives me far better elevation data than previous phones. A previous Sony Z1 had similar power consumption when only Locus was running but it's elevation data was quite inaccurate.
I have no experience with newer phones. But this is important and interesting indeed.
To me, knowing about the position of the GPS device is important, because I have it in an ammunition pocket on my rucksack and only the top 10 cm of the device are uncovered. E.g. my Sony Z1 GPS is on top (left IIRC) of the display side. It works very reliable also in bad GPS conditions. I don't care about GPS elevation data because I'm fine with LiDAR data.
I've changed my battery in it once. Never a problem, I walk 8 hrs at max typically, with no 4G turned on, not making photos etc., it's always not empty.
I have a Tasker profile which turns a lot of stuff on and off for hiking, in order to have low battery consumption. I'm using that awesome Nova launcher. When I swipe the Locus icon up instead tapping, it toggles that tasker hiking state on/off.