Hello,
Apologies for taking so long to respond, and thanks once again for all the helpful responses.
I did give the GPS on my phone a go during a recent flight. I allowed the phone to get a fix first (using a data connection) before getting in the plane. Then, when it was all stable I enabled Flight Mode (therefore disabling what was alternating between a GPRS and an EDGE connection) and leaving the GPS feature enabled.
I thought it worked OK, but when I got home and reviewed the track what I found was bizarre. The initial position was fine, and the track shown as I taxied around the airfield, took up position for power checks, and finally lined up for the runway was fine. However, after that, the software indicates I did not go further than 1.17km over the course of an hour and the track simply shows the flight doing zig zags all over the airfield for that time (I did in reality end up about 30 miles away on a navigational exercise).
Not sure what happened exactly, but I get the sense the phone's hardware simply isn't up for the job.
I don't intend to buy any hardware just for the purpose of tracking my student flights at the moment. I may in the future (after my PPL) get a proper GPS and in that case I would look for one that has software capable of producing logged tracks in a format I could use for purposes mentioned in this thread.
Thanks anyway guys!