I first wanted to say great work with the application! I have owned a couple types of popular golf GPS units, and have tried most of the mobile golf applications.

So based on using the oobgolf app had a couple comments/suggestions:

Hole Screen - Found a few holes where the GPS unit was oriented “backwards” where the top of the screen was showing the tee-off box, and not the green as expected.

Hole Screen – Would like to see the total yardage more prominent on the screen, the text is small and hard to see, and often am most interested in that yardage more than the default layup yardages shown. Perhaps even the front/back of green numbers to avoid having to change to the green view.

Scorecard – Found it to be too cluttered, and a little tedious to have to scroll to see all the items. A lot of the screen shows current score details, but don’t want to have that cluttered on the screen when entering score information. Also would suggest a “roller-wheel” to be an easier widget to enter scores (putts, etc.) rather than a number type interface. Also if the roller-wheel could default to a best guess number (i.e. par for a scratch golfer), to minimize spinning to another value.

Play Golf Screen - Would like it to remember the last setting for "Notify Friends". I'm never interested in notifying friends, and it always defaults to being on, so it's easy to forget to change it and wind up SPAMMING friends. Also the same suggestion for the web site, which always defaults to notify.

Again great application looking forward to future updates!

Thanks for the feedback. I think all of these are things we can approve on.

The one exception is the first mention of having the green at the top in hole view. Based on Google Map licensing, North always has to stay at the top. We are aware of a few other companies that are violating the licensing and rotating their maps, but I think we are going to stick with the agreement for now.

Sounds good Kevin...

One other thing I found is that I wasn't clear if the iPhone can/should be turned off between shots (to conserve battery) or always left one (perhaps I should read the instruction better ;>). Although related to this I noticed some other devices have the following features that were really handy on the course:

A Sleep mode between shots that would keep the GPS active, but minimize any other display/processing to conserve battery life (for those that leave the device on between shots). Although perhaps with the way you've written the software this isn't needed.

An indicator that will let you know when the GPS has stabilized/locked on to a specific point. Often I would be standing at a point and waiting for a while to see if the GPS is stable or not (by viewing if yardages changed), so it would be nice to have an icon or something to let you know immediately.

Cheers - Great app and web site!

The other apps wrote the lock type features before Apple allowed GPS to run in the background in iOS4, but that shouldn't be needed anymore. If you have iOS4 you can put your phone to sleep and the app will keep a lock on the GPS and conserve battery for everything else.

klangdon wrote:

The other apps wrote the lock type features before Apple allowed GPS to run in the background in iOS4, but that shouldn't be needed anymore. If you have iOS4 you can put your phone to sleep and the app will keep a lock on the GPS and conserve battery for everything else.

Good to know that makes things easier. Although looking into the iPhone sleep mode online I'm still not clear...

Is the iPhone Settings->General->Autolock "sleep mode" the same as physically powering off the phone using the top power button? And if so in both cases are you saying the GPS is still active during that time? So you can hit a shot, turn off the power with the top button till the next shot and the GPS will be active the whole time?

Also can you always trust that if yardages are shown on the app that the GPS has already calibrated to a specific point? I guess I'm just used to having to "wait" for yardages to stabilize.

Thanks for the info and getting back.

Yes, if you have upgraded your phone to iOS 4 or greater hitting the top power button will not turn off the GPS for our app (might for others).

We currently display whatever yardages we get back from the device. But we are considering some indication of how accurate the GPS signals are at any given time.

Since we don't ever stop the GPS during a round you can pretty much assume the signal is as good as it gets after first few minutes. Of course putting it in your pocket or under something in your cart could hurt that.