Mobile Tracking

Mobile Tracking by APPFlyer is a GPS app that keeps track of your device’s position at regular intervals.

This app records your GPS position and sends your position to an inbuilt database at intervals that you specify. For instance, you can set Mobile Tracking to record your position every 5, 10, 15 minutes or every hour plus even longer durations, then you will have a database of your device’s locations.

Importantly, you can set this app to send a notification by email, to Facebook, Flickr or Twitter. So what could you use this app for? Well, the possibilities are endless, but the main use that I would use this app for is to keep track of loved ones or friends for safety reasons. For example, let’s say you go on holiday to another country and your wife, husband or children go out on a tour or even out to buy something and you worry about them until they get back. With this app you could set Mobile Tracking to send you their location every 15 minutes or so and you wouldn’t worry as much about them.

We all know that GPS tracking apps consume a lot of battery power but this is not so with Mobile Tracking. The developer has addressed this issue by programming the app in a way as to only turn on the GPS feature on your device when Mobile Tracking is recording your location. Mobile Tracking has an advantage over many other GPS tracking apps in that it won’t run your battery down so fast.

Here’s another useful idea in which Mobile Tracking would be invaluable . . .When your children grow up and become teenagers they naturally want some space to go out and meet friends and maybe go to parties. As a parent the worry can be torture, but with this app you can have an update on their location at all times. Thus, helping the parent not to worry so much and for your children to be safer, as you’ll know exactly where they are.

One very handy feature of this app is that you can set the GPS accuracy in the form of a radius of 3000 metres right down to pin-point accuracy. Pin point accuracy uses more battery power but 100 metres would be enough accuracy for most people and 1000 metres would be plenty enough to get a rough fix on the device’s location. I’d use 10 metres if I wanted to be absolutely sure of a loved one’s position.

This app is very simple to use. From the moment you open up the app, the interface has been simplified so that there is no learning curve needed. Just open the app, hit ‘record’, adjust your preferred settings and output reporting options, then the app runs quietly in the background.

I can see this app would be useful for keeping track of employees too. For instance, if you had a delivery company and wanted to know where your delivery vans where stationed at any one time, it would be a cheaper option to issue employees with an  iDevice with Mobile Tracking, and then have reports coming in conveniently by email rather than fitting GPS units to all of your delivery vans. For a more fun use, if you were touring around Europe for example you could send a whole day’s locations to Facebook for your friends to see where you’ve been.

When the information is collected in the database a wheel picker is shown where you can view recorded GPS positions on a map, by the date or hour. You can view the time your device (or whoever you are tracking) was in that location by checking the time. This app also displays latitude and longitude information.

Mission Accomplished

What impressed me about this app is that it could be very useful for safety reasons, such as keeping track of loved ones in an unpredictable world. I liked the fact that Mobile Tracking only used the GPS function on the device when it recorded a position, thus saving battery power. The developer has gone even further in giving you control over battery power consumption by letting you adjust the accuracy of the GPS tracking radius. The app is really easy to use and could be used in many different situations for many different reasons.

Room to improve

Some of the grammar is a little off on the messages that pop up in the blue box at the top of the screen. The English is still understandable though and is no big deal. This can be easily corrected in a future update.

A second suggestion for an enhancement to this app could be to have an emergency button added. For example, if the person carrying the device runs into trouble or has an accident, they could press the emergency button to send their location to Facebook and by email with the ability to add a help message. Of course, this suggestion is only an idea.

Conclusion

I really liked this app because of the potential to use tracking to keep loved ones safe. There is a whole host of other situations you could use this app for and it does not drain your battery power like most other GPS apps. I will personally use this app when my family are out and about in an area that I am unfamiliar with, such as on holiday in a different culture.. Nice and easy to use and well put together. For under a dollar it is excellent value and gives you piece of mind.