Trails - GPS Tracker review

Trails is a neat little GPS app for the iPhone owner on the move that lets you trace where you’ve been on a trip (for example a run or bike ride), and then download the results to admire and analyse them in numerous ways. And it’s rather good – side from for a couple of glitches.

You start with a plain-looking route history screen, which hides a mass of clever features. You create and name your route, and can optionally import tracks from a number of sites including Bikely and Mapmyrun or your own GPX file.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to get on your bike - or your feet, boat, hang-glider or hot air balloon. While it’s tracking, Trails shows a you a map of your location, your speed, time elapsed, and distance travelled. The maps are taken from OpenStreetMap, not Google – Trails likes to store maps to save you bandwidth and battery, and Google don’t allow this. Don’t be put off, they’re good maps.

To test trails, we tracked the commute home and uploaded it to EveryTrail.com (well, we couldn’t just cycle around Richmond Park all day). It’s a pretty scenic commute - through the heart of London then up the Thames to Putney.

Trails also lets you use the camera while it’s running, so you don’t have to quit the app to take a picture or two. Hit the camera icon, snap the pic, and keep going – and keep an eye on Trails’ nasty habit of stopping the recording when you take a picture.

That’s all the work you need to do though. Stick the iPhone in your pocket, take the occasional snap (if you want), and remember to stop it when you reach your destination.

Once you arrive, you can take a look at the stats on your journey or admire the whole thing on the map. Then a couple of clicks can share it by email, or with the TrailRunner desktop app, or the EveryTrail website – all in a couple of clicks. If you send the track to EveryTrail and your photos to Flickr (via iPhoto), you can join the track up with the pictures to put them on a map.

Sadly though, we hit some timing bugs here. Apple seems to prevent accurate storage of the times images were taken, and EveryTrail’s upload also seems to have a nasty clock bug, which between them prevents the full use of in-app photos or direct track uploads – we had to manually re-time all our photos.

If you want to map pictures, we recommend you use your own camera to record your trip and keep the iPhone safely in your pocket, then email yourself the tracks (in GPX and KML format, with correct times) and upload them manually.

These issues aside, the main features of Trails – the tracking and mapping - are both excellent. This is definitely an app we’ll be keeping – follow us on EveryTrail to see where we take it.

Trails - GPS Tracker info

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Platform: iPhone/iPod touch

Price: £2.39

Developer: Felix Lamouroux

Website/Demo: The official Trails website

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