All iPhones after model 6 have a barometer, and of course there’s some apps that make use of it. It is also possible to calibrate the indication. 100 ft should not be a problem anyway, in most cases in which I would use a phone as an altimeter anyway.
OK Alexis you can get someone to write this app.
FWIW I wrote to Garmin UK, asking if any of their current handhelds do both terrain an airspace. Never got a reply…
After a while I got a reply from Garmin
So these are the same as what the Garmin 496 does (except that the 496’s beep does not come out on the audio output) which leads to the question of whether the airspace depictions on these boxes is any good. The 496’s depiction is rubbish. Could anyone with any of these comment, maybe with a screenshot showing some bit of airspace? I might also visit a pilot shop that sells these.
It is also feasible to convert that beep into something better, if necessary, but one would need to open the unit and install a little PCB in there.
I am still looking into an “aviation” GPS rather than a smartphone stuck to the yoke running a tablet app, because you get better terrain warnings with the former, and that’s really a lot more important for IFR.
What’s the resolution on the “aviation” GPS?
Easily good enough for this job, although obviously you don’t get airspace labels (that are readable).
However none of the tablet products show readable airspace labels unless you zoom in a long way, but which time – on a phone – you will see little of the surrounding airspace. So both solutions would be primarily an airspace/terrain warning device, without giving you the bigger picture of where you are.
I can run Oziexplorer on my S7 phone, running the CAA 1:500k charts, and the airspace labels are readable to a very similar extent to what they would be readable on one of the tablet products running on the phone. Of course there are no warnings of anything…
I think the probability that you have dedicated nice dedicated devices improving seriously on user interface is decreasing sharply and wouldn’t be surprised if we just stop seeing any new products being released.
Seems to me that you (/ most of people) don’t care too much about airspace when IFR, or terrain when VFR. A phone / mini tablet should do the trick then, no?
When flying IFR: You have Oziexplorer or software with high resolution terrain (Garmin pilot can have 10 arc-second if you do the 1GB download, which from a quick google search seems to be comparable to the “high resolution” solutions in dedicated devices). GP also has the terrain only view.
When flying VFR: You have EVFR (never used so not sure how it alerts) or SD (Which alerts nicely, but I think you are not fond of) that do the alerts.
If you read back up the thread, there isn’t a tablet product which does the PULL UP etc warnings on terrain, the way the aviation units do. I think that is important because that is what might kill you (in IMC, obviously). Busting airspace might cost up anything up to £5000 but that is cheaper than death 
For the record: I have written this before, but the stuff about me being against SD is not true. I used to feed loads of product feature tips to Tim Dawson (who wrote SD), including introducing him to Travis Holland whose EuroFPL service he uses for FP filing. As anyone who knows Tim will tell you, he ritually rejects a suggestion as a load of crap, rejecting one of mine about some IFR-related feature with “nobody flies IFR?” … and a few weeks later the feature appears in the product The “SD story” is probably not familiar to most non-UK pilots and is really one of a group of out of control fanboys people who hang out on certain UK sites and beat up anyone who suggests the product is less than perfect. There were other aspects to that story e.g. their use of a UK site for vast amounts of free advertising. Many people thought that this combination (extensive advertising, and beating people up) eventually became rather distasteful and expressed those views. After a long time, this free advertising came to an end and a bunch of people set out on getting revenge. Occassionally one of these guys pops up on EuroGA and pretends to get all indignant when one of his off topic rants gets moved to the merged SD thread (a bit like the Cirrus Jet thread was suffering a while ago). But no matter what, the mod is always made to look like a nasty gorilla This situation is something we take care to avoid arising here on EuroGA and I am sure that the (really very simple) requirement for commercial posters to participate generally is the right way to go about it.
Personally I have since 2003 flown with a different setup, involving the “real printed” VFR charts running on a tablet. I find the UK ones highly readable (on an 8" or bigger LCD) but of course you get no warnings. Only very recently I have started playing with EasyVFR, to get airspace warnings, and I am still testing this, in parallel with the previous solution. In the longer run I would like to upgrade my yoke-mounted G496 with something that does both airspace and terrain but there is no obvious candidate. I need to check the airspace depictions on the new Garmins to verify this finally.
EVFR alerts the same way as SD.
Peter wrote:
If you read back up the thread, there isn’t a tablet product which does the PULL UP etc warnings on terrain, the way the aviation units do
I’ve heard the pull up warning when on a cable car in a mountain. That was just after having done some mountain flying. I think that was Garmin Pilot.
GP still has some issues with airspace (doesn’t seem to display all ATZs, but that seems a general Garmin issue, as saw G1000 Nxi was missing it too), and I don’t think does airspace alerts, but it would do the rest fairly well: I believe while displaying the CAA chart and if you get in a terrain caution, you’ll get a TERRAIN TERRAIN (or PULL UP, actually not sure which one), + and inset showing the terrain issue.
(I don’t think there is negative/unfair treatment here on SD, I just had the slight impression you personally (not mod) didn’t have much sympathy for them. I have been disappointed by SD email feedback (they tend to put the issues on anyone else), but still like the actual product a lot. At the moment, I tend to (without pre-thinking about it) use SD rather than GP+CAA chart sub).
I personally think that Garmin is likely to put more dev effort in Garmin Pilot than their “Brick and Mortar” units, so I doubt you’ll ever find a unit that does what you want.
Here’s a video of the Terrain working:
