You can ride your bike without a smartphone if you have a Cowboy 2 or a more recent bike model.

You can both turn on the Cowboy bike and keep riding once it’s already on without a smartphone connection.

If you find yourself without a phone or your phone has run out of battery, you can always turn the bike on by removing the battery for 10 seconds and reinserting it. This Manual Unlock feature will cause the bike to spring into life.

You can rest easy – it’s totally secure as only you can take the battery out using your unique battery key. As an additional safety measure in the event of theft, you can rapidly deactivate Manual Unlock by toggling ‘Find My Bike’ mode in the app.

However, connectivity is at the design core of the Cowboy and connection via the app is recommended for the best possible riding experience. The preferred way to wake up the bike is using the Auto Unlock feature or with Siri voice command. Learn about all the ways to unlock your bike here.

For Cowboy 1s, you need your smartphone to turn on the electrical assistance of the bike in the first place. But once on, your bike stays on. That means that if your smartphone connection fails during your ride, the bike will continue working normally.

However, you won’t be able to switch it off at the end of your ride except by removing the battery. To get around this, you can activate Auto Lock in your bike settings in the app to make sure your bike automatically shuts down when you stop using it.