Review: Google Latitude for iPhone

Peekaboo!

Let the stalking commence! Yesterday, Google announced the release of Latitude for iPhone. For those unfamiliar with this lesser-known Google application, Latitude is a somewhat controversial app that lets you see the real-time location of your Google contacts, provided they have given you permission. The service is limited to use in just five countries right now – but guess what? New Zealand is one of them!

Google say that they “worked hard with Apple” to bring Latitude to the iPhone and at first coded it as a native app, however Apple pushed back on this fearing it would cause confusion with the existing Google Maps app. As such, Google coded the application as a webapp. Upon hearing this, I was expecting a somewhat clunky interface but against all the odds Google have managed to pull-off an extremely polished job that is barely recognisable as HTML.

To use the service, users need to navigate to www.google.com/latitude direct from Safari on iPhone. Safari will ask for permission to use location services, and upon okaying this you will receive a second system message asking specificly if www.google.com/latitude can use location services. This is a new API for webapps enabled in 3.0 so expect to see more websites that can make use of your iPhone’s GPS in the future. The same “pinch to zoom” technique as the Maps app is used, and it is almost as smooth as it is in the Google Maps app.

I'll be there for yoooou

Adding a friend in latitude is a simple affair – hit ‘Friends list’ in the lower-left corner of the screen and then hit ‘add friends’. You can then choose to pick from an existing Gmail contact or enter a new email address. Your friend will then receive an email asking for the permission, and once they ok this your friend will appear in your list. You then simply click that friend to view their current location. I tested the service with Dan, and it worked flawlessly. I see this being very useful when planning to meet somewhere – no more “Where are you?” texts!

There is, however, one fairly big downside to the iPhone implementation of this service which renders it somewhat useless in comparison to versions of other platforms. Say Google: “since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Window Mobile.”

Ouch. Was that a thinly veiled swipe at the big fruit? In fact the whole press release reads with more than a hint of frustration at wasted efforts and you really get the feeling that Google resents the way that the iPhone implementation has effictively crippled their hard work. I must say, I feel their sentiment. While Google Latitude is certainly a revolutionary proposition, it no doubt would have worked far better as an integrated part of the Google Maps app.