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View Full Version : Android GPS Apps - Latitude, Glympse, Instamapper, etc.



Roasted
August 1st, 2011, 05:00 PM
So lately I've grown interest in one of these apps. Mostly because I tend to mountain bike alone and it tends to worry certain family members since I don't exactly ride along the trail at 5 mph whistling a Jack Johnson tune to myself as I enjoy nature. As a result, I began to look into GPS tracking on my phone, just in *case* something crazy happens.

I've looked into several scenarios, but I'm curious if you guys might be able to help narrow down my search.

Glympse - So far it seems super nice. Real time tracking, nice map layout, super easy to use. The downside? You have to specify an expiration time, with a max of 4 hours being the highest on their list. Uh. No. If I'm mountain biking, I might be out there for 8 hours easy. I don't want to be in a position where I'm unable to press the "add 4 hours to timer" button if I'm truly in a bind. This simple feature kinda causes Glympse to strike out hard.

Instamapper - It's pretty much everything that I want. I had to set up an account and tie in my phone to it (very easy), but it's not real time. The user has to F5 the heck out of their browser to see if I'm moving or if I'm stationary, etc. -1 in this department, but so far I dig it otherwise.

Google Latitude - I read a lot about this. I also read a lot about how inaccurate it is, sometimes by hours (saying you're in Virginia when you left Virginia at 2pm and it's now 8 hours later and you're in Florida). However, I also saw a similarity with all of these reviews. They were from February 2009, which sounds like it was about the time Google Latitude was released. I'm going to test it out on my own here to see how good/bad it is. My aunt used it to watch my cousin drive across the country when he came up to visit last week and she spoke highly of it.

That said, has anybody used Google Latitude? Any good/bad things to say? Does anybody know of any other applications that might do the job here? For what it's worth I have an Android phone.

Thanks guys!

parag_vaish
August 1st, 2011, 08:15 PM
I've used Glympse for time periods longer than 4 hours and it does offer an easy mechanism to add time. It is 15 minute increments, but it is an easy one tap offering. I suppose that doesn't work well if you are on a bike ride where you don't want to pull out your phone every 15 minutes after the 4th hour. You could simply start a new Glympse with 4 hours on it. In general, I like the fact that they cap the time so that it doesn't drain battery life and cause me to accidentally expose my location longer than I'd like. It seems Google Lattitude falls down with restricting access and amount of time. I did have an experience where someone thought I was in Arizona when I had left there two weeks prior. Glympse is solving my problem on sharing my location for limited windows and with people who I don't want to always know my location. It works well for me.

Roasted
August 1st, 2011, 08:38 PM
I've used Glympse for time periods longer than 4 hours and it does offer an easy mechanism to add time. It is 15 minute increments, but it is an easy one tap offering. I suppose that doesn't work well if you are on a bike ride where you don't want to pull out your phone every 15 minutes after the 4th hour. You could simply start a new Glympse with 4 hours on it. In general, I like the fact that they cap the time so that it doesn't drain battery life and cause me to accidentally expose my location longer than I'd like. It seems Google Lattitude falls down with restricting access and amount of time. I did have an experience where someone thought I was in Arizona when I had left there two weeks prior. Glympse is solving my problem on sharing my location for limited windows and with people who I don't want to always know my location. It works well for me.

I hear you on that. Believe me, I love the fact you can limit your GPS exposure time so it expires and just disappears.

My fear is this. What if I have a nasty wreck and I can't get to my phone? What if I can't hit that "add 4 hours" button? I want the option to let it run until my battery depletes completely just in case I ever run into a scenario like that.

I think it would make sense to have a 24 hour option on there. I just think 4 hours being the absolute max is, well... really lame.

I also ran into this app called Life360, which seems to be geared towards parents watching over kids, however it has some functionality that might be nice. It has a "circle" like feature to it, where I can add users to my "family". Let's say I have a nasty wreck and I can't get up, but I can get to my phone. I just open the app back up and hit the panic button within the app. It sends a call, email, and text message to everybody in the family circle, along with my approximate GPS coordinates and the nearest mailing address to me. It also has a child predator feature to find any registered offenders nearby. Really nice app... it may be what I end up using in the long run, but I'm still looking for the Glympse + unlimited GPS session app... I just feel convinced there has to be one, since that tends to be the number one complaint of Glympse.

Roasted
August 3rd, 2011, 06:09 AM
I talked to my buddy who has an iPhone. He just drove cross country and used Google Latitude so family could track him. He said it happened in real time, and he could confirm it did because he checked it from his girlfriend's phone (who was with him) and watched the dot slide across the screen.

On the flip side, it seems like the Android version doesn't do this. Instead of true real time, once you bring another application to the foreground, it begins to only check in every 15 minutes or so. Most times in that scenario it just triangulates the cell towers instead of using true GPS.

This is a little frustrating. I'm just looking for a simple, easy to use way to share my location with relative ease to some family and friends. However, I don't want the time restriction that Glympse has. Is there any way Google Latitude can be customized? I'm just not seeing how, however, since October 2010 people are saying Google Latitude for Android CAN do real time.

Any input??


EDIT - It's funny. When I talk to users about how Latitude works for me, they're like, well yeah, that's how it's supposed to work. It uses GPS to find your exact location, then from there it tends to rely on triangulation of towers to get a rough idea of where you're at every so often afterward. That way you have a rough and pretty recent idea of where the user is at. I wonder if my buddy was mistaken that he had to have been using something else for the real time minute to minute updates?