Last Friday, the 31st July 2015, I was out and about, doing some GPS / Geolocation App Testing, for both iOS and Android apps, for one of my clients.

The general idea was to supply a list of locations to the developers, then test that the apps recognised those locations, when they were reached/passed by.

I also found the following tips came in handy for the testing process:

1. The GPS Coordinates website at http://www.gps-coordinates.net/ is very useful for looking up the GPS coordinates of an address and also doing a reverse lookup, using the GPS coordinates to find an address. This site also allows you to store the locations you lookup. However, I couldn’t find a way of creating a map with all the locations on it, so used Google Maps for that instead.

2. Google Maps is ideal for creating your own Map containing several locations, which will help guide you through the GPS locations you need to visit. I found creating a Google Map was possible only in the Desktop browser version of Google Maps and not in the iOS App – I’m not sure if that functionality has ever been in the iOS App, but it’s definitely not there now.
I used Google’s Chrome browser, just to make sure all possible functionality was available, and logged in to my Google account, then into Google Maps and selected My Maps from the menu options, then pressed Create to create a new map.
I then added the required Waypoints / locations that I needed to visit and at the end, saved the map with a relevant name.

3. To track the Google Map locations during my actual app test, on my iPhone, I then found I had two options – 1) to use the Google Maps app while logged into my Google Account and I could see the Places I’d added to my map, shown as stars, or select the Places from a list, but couldn’t see the actual map I’d created 2) use a browser and visit https://www.google.com/maps/d/ and if logged into your Google account you can select and then your Google Map.

4. I also found a good idea was to use an iOS app to track my walk to the different locations and found that the Map My Walk app was ideal for this, although it does take a bit of setting up before using it, so it’s best to do that in the prep stage.