Cell phones and mobile devices increasingly utilize GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to track location. With the explosion of “location aware” applications for smartphones, and the rise in the use of GPS devices for navigation, people are growing more and more accustomed to their “smart” devices knowing where they are at all times.
As we are always working to stay on the forefront of development in telephone timekeeping, we wanted to let you know what is on the horizon. We recently launched Mobile Chronotek, and were open to considering new mobile location based technologies as well. With that in mind, we took the time to evaluate the state of location aware mobile technologies, and how they could be applied to the Chronotek system. This research has led us to two determinations:
First- the current location technologies are limited exclusively to the “smartphone” category, which is still a very small fraction of cell phone users in the United States. It is important to note that, for the vast majority of cell phone users without data connected smartphones, location aware services simply don’t work.
Second-Reliability. The Chronotek system is predicated on its ability to be absolutely reliable and accurate. Some of the location aware systems and applications that we tested had great features and were a lot of fun- but didn’t provide the kind of guaranteed reliability we expect from our own service.
So whats the takeaway from this? Technology is always changing rapidly, and at Chronotek we are very proud of how we incorporate these advances into our product. We also remain very committed to maintaining the extraordinarily high standards for reliability and usability that is the hallmark of our system. With these goals in mind, we will continue to monitor the development of cell phone location tracking, and move to incorporate these features when the time is right.
