What are currently the best EFBs for Android?

I previously ran ForeFlight on an iPad mini but I switched to an iFly 740b over a year ago for several reasons:

- My iPad mini had overheating problems despite precautions.
- ForeFlight kept raising their price to charge for features that wouldn't run unless I bought a new iPad.
- The iPad display isn't bright enough.
- ForeFlight only runs on Apple devices, while iFly will run on iOS, Android, and Windows.
- ForeFlight customer support has gone downhill in the last couple of years, but iFly has been great.​

So far I've been very satisfied with iFly. The 740b has given me zero problems with lockup or overheating. I'm also running the app on my old iPad mini, so I can flight plan there then just sync to the 740b. I then fly with the iPad stashed in the plane as a backup to the 740b.
 
I like the iPad mini and if I keep it on my lap it doesn't overheat. I guess I'll hang with that platform as long as I can get map updates. I checked out iFly and that is an excellent alternative too. I so appreciate the input here.
 
Half Fast said:
I previously ran ForeFlight on an iPad mini but I switched to an iFly 740b over a year ago for several reasons:

- My iPad mini had overheating problems despite precautions.
- ForeFlight kept raising their price to charge for features that wouldn't run unless I bought a new iPad.
- The iPad display isn't bright enough.
- ForeFlight only runs on Apple devices, while iFly will run on iOS, Android, and Windows.
- ForeFlight customer support has gone downhill in the last couple of years, but iFly has been great.​

So far I've been very satisfied with iFly. The 740b has given me zero problems with lockup or overheating. I'm also running the app on my old iPad mini, so I can flight plan there then just sync to the 740b. I then fly with the iPad stashed in the plane as a backup to the 740b.
Click to expand...
And what is the 740b?
 
Very interestng!! Never knew that existed. Is it running an Android platform? Is that the same iFly app I can buy and load on my tablet?
It's sold out there so it must be popular!
 
I use Garmin Pilot on a Galaxy Tab S8 and Avare on my phone a Galaxy S10. So far I have really like Garmin Pilot on the Tab s8. I have the tablet set up in a knee board and find that works well for me, the phone is on a portable ram x-mount that I latch onto the yoke. I have found so far that this combo fits both areas well and for me work really well. The cost was far less that just one IPad or mini with Foreflight and for my uses Garmin Pilot does everything I want for now :D. Neither the phone or Tablet have had heat related issues unlike IPad's do all the time. I greatly prefer the display on the Galaxy Tab also.
 
mslisaj said:
Very interestng!! Never knew that existed. Is it running an Android platform? Is that the same iFly app I can buy and load on my tablet?
It's sold out there so it must be popular!
Click to expand...


It’s the same sw as the iFly app but running on it’s own dedicated hardware. Nice, bright screen, built-in GPS, will connect via wifi to an external GPS/ADSB receiver. It does need external power as the internal battery doesn’t last long. I have its audio output plugged into my audio panel so I hear traffic warnings, terrain alerts, etc.
 
Thank you all for your great idea's. I down loaded the iFly and the Avare and I like them both. Avare didn't seem as user friendly and I couldn't see that my Stratux was connected and didn't see any traffic on the map. But I did like it's clean interface. As I mentioned at the start I have been a FlyQ user and that was my first EFB. But these other options are certainly viable for me if Apple finally makes FlyQ unusable.

Again thank you for your feedback as I certainly appreciate your time weighing in on my questions.

Lisa
 
It's complicated. I use ForeFlight for planning, weight and balance, etc. It only runs on Apple, so I have it on my phone.

In the plane I use I Fly on a sunlight readable tablet. It would be great if either Apple made an I Pad mini that was sunlight readable (1100 NITS or more), OR if ForeFlight ran on Android. Neither of those two are happening. So yeah, I have and pay for two subscriptions.
 
mslisaj said:
Thank you all for your great idea's. I down loaded the iFly and the Avare and I like them both. Avare didn't seem as user friendly and I couldn't see that my Stratux was connected and didn't see any traffic on the map. But I did like it's clean interface. As I mentioned at the start I have been a FlyQ user and that was my first EFB. But these other options are certainly viable for me if Apple finally makes FlyQ unusable.

Again thank you for your feedback as I certainly appreciate your time weighing in on my questions.

Lisa
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Avare will connect to Stratux, but there are some settings you have to get into. Google helps, it will take me too long to set everything up and see how it works.
 
WDD said:
It's complicated. I use ForeFlight for planning, weight and balance, etc. It only runs on Apple, so I have it on my phone.

In the plane I use I Fly on a sunlight readable tablet. It would be great if either Apple made an I Pad mini that was sunlight readable (1100 NITS or more), OR if ForeFlight ran on Android. Neither of those two are happening. So yeah, I have and pay for two subscriptions.
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Similar situation. I use the iPad in the cockpit with a lifetime flyQ subscription. I have iFly on my android phone that is used as backup and for planning. I prefer to plan with the iPad however, I have my phone on me all the time and the iPad is usually stashed in my flight bag.
I have a Samsung foldable phone. It opens up into a tablet format which makes flight planning on the phone much easier.
 
mslisaj said:
Very interestng!! Never knew that existed. Is it running an Android platform? Is that the same iFly app I can buy and load on my tablet?
It's sold out there so it must be popular!
Click to expand...
It's sold out because it's an older platform and there are no plans for Adventure Pilot (company that makes iFly) to replace it with a newer dedicated hardware device.

iFly originally came out before there were iOS or Android tablets, so the dedicated hardware device (the original "iFly 700") was all they had. As tablets and phones have become ubiquitous, iFly made an app with the same features and UI that would run on those devices, and over time most iFly users have come to use those platforms. AP did upgrade the dedicated device platform a few times over the years (to a 720, a 740, and finally the 740b, with a short-lived 520 also in the mix at one point), but the fraction of iFly users wanting a dedicated hardware device has fallen off sharply enough now that it no longer makes business sense to offer such a device. Most users still using a dedicated device do so for their NMEA output to drive an experimental autopilot, and/or for their improved heat tolerance and screen brightness in extremely sunny cockpits.

The dedicated devices ran on WindowsCE, which is now also an obsolete OS. For a long time, AP/iFly maintained the app so that it would run identically across the dedicated devices and Windows PCs and iOS and Android tablets. Eventually, the hardware devices being the lowest-common-denominator was dragging the rest of the devices down too much, so AP decided to "cut the anchor" and stop targeting development for the dedicated devices.

AP plans to maintain data support for the dedicated devices indefinitely (there's no/little added effort for them to do so), so the expectation is that they will continue to be usable for a long time to come. But they will maintain essentially their current feature set and UI, while AP will continue to evolve and improve the software for Windows/iOS/Android devices.

If someone really wanted a new 740b, there is still stock available as I post this via Aircraft Spruce: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/ifly740gps11-15662.php
 
mslisaj said:
Very interestng!! Never knew that existed. Is it running an Android platform? Is that the same iFly app I can buy and load on my tablet?
It's sold out there so it must be popular!
Click to expand...

It was until about a week ago. Adventure Pilot has renamed the app to iFlyEFB and focusing solely on that going forward.
The app is solid; I run it on a $169 8” Samsung tablet from Costco.
 
Farangutan has an interesting situation I think. I got to FlyQ a little late for the lifetime offer. It's certainly a first rate piece of software but it's Achilles heel is the fact that it's tied to Apple and you wil be forced to upgrade a $500+ tablet every four or five years. I would certainly stay with FlyQ as it's a great EFB but the fact that It's not upgradable because of the Apple hardware is a breaking point for me.
Avare is certainly clean and to the point. I liked that also but for my test drive I had trouble getting my Stratux connected. That's not its fault just I couldn't figure it out right away. IFlyEFB worked right for me the first time. I had ADSB traffic showing right off and I loved how the information for each was displayed. Another plus that Avare and IFly had over FlyQ is a very flexable weight and balance program built right into the software. I've suggested that to FlyQ for a few years now and nothing on that front.
As I have 16 months left on my FlyQ subscription I am going to stay there for now but a Samsung tablet certainly waits in my future.

Now the point will be made here that all hardware goes obsolete after awhile and even the battery has a finite life span. But an Android or Windows platform is much cheaper to replace, performs as well as Apple without the forced updates and other "Apple" issues. This is just my opinion and there are millions of Apple users that make that a multi-billion dollar company so that works for them and those folks are very happy. But I'm just a little too old school and will run something until it quits before replacement. And again it's just my opinion so please don't beat me up about it. IFly, Avare and FlyQ are all fabulous EFB's but my issue is solely with Apple.:)
 
TCABM said:
Looks like the 2019 Tab A 10” is my most current version. Only feature I wish it had was a smart stylus.

SM-T510 is the model number.
Click to expand...
Looks like the newer version might be called the A8.
 
mslisaj said:
I have a four year old iPad that I purchased brand new to have an EFB when I fly. FlyQ was recommended to me and I absolutely the software. But this lousy iPad is now obsolete!! No more updates and FlyQ has a wonderful update that I can't access because Apple has decided my "old" iPad has to go.
Click to expand...

You are pointing fingers in the wrong direction on this one. Apple still supports ipads from 9 years ago (https://endoflife.date/ipad). FlyQ decided to depend on ios versions that your device can't run and end support for older versions, not apple.
 
172andyou said:
You are pointing fingers in the wrong direction on this one. Apple still supports ipads from 9 years ago (https://endoflife.date/ipad). FlyQ decided to depend on ios versions that your device can't run and end support for older versions, not apple.
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Point well taken! Thank you.
But I still have another iPad that I had to replace because it was not updateable anymore either and other programs I use would not run on it anymore. Thus I replace that device with a Samsung that does the same thing and I don't run into the issues. Bottom line is if I'm going to be throwing away perfectly good hardware because it's "old" I'm going to can a $200 Samsung and not a $500 Apple. But thanks to you guys I know about perfectly good EFB's that run on the cheaper hardware and that was my original question. :D
 
Matthew said:
Looks like the newer version might be called the A8.
Click to expand...

I think so. The current A7 would be a slightly smaller form factor with similar capability or go to the S6 for S pen support at a higher price.

My SM-T510 10” is svelte compared to an 10” ipad. Much, much thinner and lighter which is probably why I thought it was 8” class tablet.

I have all the charts and procedures for all 50 states on it and still have room for pdfs of the FAA texts, the 172M IPC, a pdf of my POH, and a bunch of other stuff. Having the ability to ex microSD storage helps tremendously.
 
TCABM said:
I think so. The current A7 would be a slightly smaller form factor with similar capability or go to the S6 for S pen support at a higher price.

My SM-T510 10” is svelte compared to an 10” ipad. Much, much thinner and lighter which is probably why I thought it was 8” class tablet.

I have all the charts and procedures for all 50 states on it and still have room for pdfs of the FAA texts, the 172M IPC, a pdf of my POH, and a bunch of other stuff. Having the ability to ex microSD storage helps tremendously.
Click to expand...
Sounds great, I’m about to pop for an A8 to replace my dying Nexus 7. I’m
Looking forward to being able to see an approach chart large enough to read without having to pinch and zoom to see the notes.
 
Matthew said:
Sounds great, I’m about to pop for an A8 to replace my dying Nexus 7. I’m
Looking forward to being able to see an approach chart large enough to read without having to pinch and zoom to see the notes.
Click to expand...

With iFly, on my tablet I can select the full screen approach plate and it’s easily readable without having to pick the tablet up off my kneeboard.

Really well worth putting hands on the various models before buying.
 
I'll chime in here again and say that I've installed iFlyEFB (formerly iFlyGPS) and it works really well on Android tablets or phones. The current version includes a W&B calculator for your aircraft and will sync your data and settings across multiple devices. I have found that the various apps have more or less difficulty grabbing ADS-B weather data from my NGT-9000. This probably has something to do the the nonstandard "standard" Garmin protocol being used to acquire data. iFly and FltPlanGo are pretty good at getting and displaying ADS-B data quickly. DroidEFB seems to be slower and more spotty at displaying ADS-B data. I still like the user interface for DroidEFB the best. It is very simple. iFlyEFB is pretty good also, but currently has the annoying habit of displaying deprecated WAC charts when zoomed out in VFR mode. This feature can be manually overridden, but it is a pain to do so. The WAC charts show a lot of decommissioned navaids and deprecated airport identifiers.
 
chemgeek said:
I'll chime in here again and say that I've installed iFlyEFB (formerly iFlyGPS) and it works really well on Android tablets or phones. The current version includes a W&B calculator for your aircraft and will sync your data and settings across multiple devices. I have found that the various apps have more or less difficulty grabbing ADS-B weather data from my NGT-9000. This probably has something to do the the nonstandard "standard" Garmin protocol being used to acquire data. iFly and FltPlanGo are pretty good at getting and displaying ADS-B data quickly. DroidEFB seems to be slower and more spotty at displaying ADS-B data. I still like the user interface for DroidEFB the best. It is very simple. iFlyEFB is pretty good also, but currently has the annoying habit of displaying deprecated WAC charts when zoomed out in VFR mode. This feature can be manually overridden, but it is a pain to do so. The WAC charts show a lot of decommissioned navaids and deprecated airport identifiers.
Click to expand...

Always good info to have. I need to try out the iFlyEFB as I've just mainly used Avare and FltPlanGo.
 
Besides the W and B, how else is it different from the current I Fly?

I like how simple it is to use in the cockpit - hope they didn’t complicate with extra features that you don’t need when trying to pull up a plate in IMC.
 
WDD said:
Besides the W and B, how else is it different from the current I Fly?

I like how simple it is to use in the cockpit - hope they didn’t complicate with extra features that you don’t need when trying to pull up a plate in IMC.
Click to expand...

If you have a 740 or similar, nothing is changing for you.

If you’re app-based, W&B is now an optional button push on the flight plan page. That and the name change are it for now. I don’t expect anything earth-shattering anytime soon. I *might* expect a logbook function since everybody else seems to be doing it. I don’t expect a document library though.
 
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I think there’s also a smart planner that will generate routes within parameters you give it. It was formerly available but in beta.
 
Half Fast said:
I think there’s also a smart planner that will generate routes within parameters you give it. It was formerly available but in beta.
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I did not notice they took it out of beta. I haven’t found RealPlan to be all that useful. Available under Options on the FP page
e82f4386a77e2b1c71842c15dda852a1.jpg
 
WDD said:
Besides the W and B, how else is it different from the current I Fly?

I like how simple it is to use in the cockpit - hope they didn’t complicate with extra features that you don’t need when trying to pull up a plate in IMC.
Click to expand...

Adventure Pilot (company behind iFly) has been constrained by the codebase and (especially the) development environment that was tied to the legacy dedicated hardware devices. They attempted to make a clean break and recode the app with a fresh start in a new development environment, but ran into numerous issues in that environment that were so vexing they abandoned the effort and went back to the original codebase (iFlyGPS) as a starting point. They are still severing ties to the legacy hardware, but this reversion to the iFlyGPS codebase was pretty recent, so even though they're signaling a significant change with the rebranding to iFlyEFB, so far the only significant change that's made it to production is the new W&B feature.

Some of the immediate changes they'll be implementing are "under the hood" things like taking advantage of modern devices' GPUs to do the screen rendering instead of using the CPU for that, which will give the app a snappier feel and smoother graphical performance. They're also planning to update the UI to present a more modern look-and-feel and integrate things like the native keyboard and device OS cut-and-paste features which were not possible with the older development environment.

So far, there's been no talk of a radical overhaul of the menu structure or "buttonology". I don't think they're looking to fix things that ain't broke.
 
Great report - thanks. I contacted the nice people at Adventure Pilot and they responded within 15 minutes. The IFly app is indeed replaced by the new EFB app. They told me to just go to the App Store and update I Fly into the EFB. Easy enough.

Great to see the well thought out menu and overall simplicity was kept.
 
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One thing I haven't seen mentioned is having your tablet and phone in the same ecosystem, running the same software, both for redundancy and for casual use. I use my tablet (a 5 year old 8" Nvidia Shield) for planned cross countries, but if I didn't bring it with me on a local flight, the phone is always available if I change my mind and decide to go somewhere over the horizon.

Last year the tablet was getting slow and glitchy, so I did a factory reset and reinstalled from scratch only the software I needed, it's like a new device again.
 
Dana said:
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is having your tablet and phone in the same ecosystem, running the same software, both for redundancy and for casual use.
Click to expand...
Sure, there are reasons for that, but there are also reasons not to. iFly presents a consistent experience across platforms, so for this particular use, it doesn't matter if your phone and tablet belong to the same ecosystem. It also means if for some reason you decide to change ecosystems, at least your EFB will remain familiar.
 
Nice point. FFlight requires Apple, and Garmin runs well on Apple but is glitchy on Android.

I Fly people strike me as focused on stable performance regardless of platform.
 
WDD said:
Nice point. FFlight requires Apple, and Garmin runs well on Apple but is glitchy on Android.

I Fly people strike me as focused on stable performance regardless of platform.
Click to expand...
including windoze, which is a feature I miss now that I'm firmly shackled into the Garmin walled garden.

It's great in here. I love it. :confused:
 
Definitely want same software on phone and tablet. I can't count the times I have planned or tweaked a leg on my phone while taking a lunch break or whatever, but left the tablet mounted in the plane.

Garmin Pilot not working well on Android may have been true 5 years ago, but now it seems like one of those things that people just repeat on the internet without any recent basis.

I loved iFly until it froze in flight. Twice. At bad times, when I needed it to work. Once on Android, once on Apple.

Will probably go back to Pilot once I finish my aircraft restoration this summer.
 
Ed Haywood said:
I loved iFly until it froze in flight. Twice. At bad times, when I needed it to work. Once on Android, once on Apple.
Click to expand...


I had ForeFlight lock up on my iPad a couple of times. So far, no lockups on my 740b. One thing that seemed to help with my iPad - make sure all other apps are hard-closed prior to flight. I think sometimes the freezes may be caused by other things running in the background.
 
I've had in-flight lockups with all efbs I've used(foreflight, flyQ, iflygps), however, it happened only a few times with foreflight. It was the reason I upgraded from a mini4 to a mini5, after clearing apps and restarting the iPad before flight didn't resolve the issue. Didn't work btw, still had lockups with flyQ. The club plane has two spare ipads running foreflight. I just take one as a spare with my flight plan loaded on it and let passengers follow along. I've only had to grab the spare for real a couple times. Once in IMC and the other because the primary ipad overheated close to an unfamiliar destination.
There is some friction to using three different programs on two different operating systems. I don't recommend it unless you take the time to learn them in and out for your flying.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Garmin Pilot not working well on Android may have been true 5 years ago, but now it seems like one of those things that people just repeat on the internet without any recent basis.
Click to expand...
I beg to differ. My 10" Samsung I use daily for...well everything.... takes a good minute to load Pilot, and occasionally crashes. Sometimes an update will improve performance, then the next update breaks it again. I gave up on my 8" Lenovos I used to use in flight and bought an ipad mini a year ago.

Of course the stupid ipad is picky about power cords, and still doesn't charge sometimes.
 
Last time had a FF in flight issue was with first generation iPad. However, iPad for FF has nothing else on it - no email, no text, nothing. It lives in the headset back switched off between flights/planes.
 
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