Word.

I've conducted that exact experiment and laughed at the results.

I love GPXView. We use maemo mapper to get in the right area, but once we're within 30 feet of the cache, the n810 goes in my pocket and we use our eXplorist to actually find the cache, then I use GPXView is for taking notes and marking it as found. If we have trouble we do use the GPXView for checking logs and hints.

GPXView is awesome. The n810's built-in GPS is not. I like to use a combination of GPXview, Maemo Mapper, and an old, cheap, hand-held Cobra GPS. The Cobra isn't great, but it's somewhat better than the n810. Maybe I'll ask Santa for a new high-end GPS this year.

As far as the compass goes, that's a limitation of any device that relies only on the GPS signal. There's no way for the device to know which way it's facing, except by taking the difference between two position measurements. Therefore, you have to be moving. There are some higher-end units which include a digital magnetic compass in addition to the GPS receiver; those will obviously be much better when you're stationary. Until I get one of them, my trusty old-school Silva will remain an essential part of my geocaching kit!

Accuracy of N810's internal GPSr is good enough for me, even up north here. Usually the GPSr takes me withing a few metres from the cache, however on urban areas I ofter rely more on satellite images than on coordinates. When fully recharged, the device has enough power for seven hours of GSPr operation. This is enough most of the time (but not always). :-)

Most of the time I use Maemo Mapper to get close to the cache and then use my sixth sense to find the cache. If that doesn't work, I start partitioning the grounds by walking around and keeping an eye on the coordinates. And if that doesn't work, I fall back to using GPXView to get more accurate coordinates.

My POI database for Maemo Mapper currently contains some 1000 POIs. All POIs have basic information such as cache name, status, size and terrain rating. They also have full cache description and the five latest log entries. I manage the POIs with home-brewn Perl script that takes care of pretty much everything from my personal notes (such as solved mysteries) to downloading POIs. I have also modified Maemo Mapper (e.g.) to be able to download maps around POI categories and to open POI dialog in less than a second by shift-tapping on one.

All in all, N810 works well for geocaching for me. Or it did until I started suffering from this bug.