Location Scout review

Damien McFerran

We review Location Scout, an application that helps you find famous movie hotspots on your Google Android phone

Published on Aug 27, 2009

If you’re an avid viewer of movies then there’s a fair chance you’ve found yourself watching a film and being sure that you recognise a certain location.

Some are naturally easy to spot – there’s no mistaking Tower Bridge or Big Ben, for example – but considering the hundreds of films that are shot in the UK each year, there’s obviously going to be many less famous settings up and down the country.

Location Scout is an application which allows you to unearth these hidden cinematic gems. Using network and GPS connections, it determines your position and then searches for film locations nearby. The app uses world-leading movie site IMDb’s database to obtain this information, so you can be sure it’s accurate.

After you’ve performed a search the results are displayed in list format. Each entry shows the title of the film, the exact location of shooting and a distance in kilometres from your current position. You can also view the results on a handy map.

Tapping each entry opens up another screen which allows you pinpoint the exact site on a map, get directions from your current position or open up IMDb to find out more information about the film in which that particular place once featured.

It’s a simple yet effective way of getting in touch with your region’s celluloid history, but there are drawbacks. We found it difficult to establish our current location using the standard network connection and instead had to rely on GPS – which of course meant we had to be standing outside when using the app.

The amount of information offered up is also a little sketchy; it would be nice to be presented with images of the location, or stills from the film in which the place features. Much of this content is already available on IMDb so surely it’s only a matter of time before the developer decides to include it – this is only version 1.0, after all.

Location Scout isn’t like to revolutionise your Android experience – in fact, you’ll probably only boot it up once in a blue moon – but it’s yet another one of those novelty apps that feels incredibly comforting to have on your handset. Next time you recognise a place in a movie, Location Scout could end up proving its worth.