This may seem like a strange post to write after finally releasing version 1.5 of TeeShot, which contains our first version of GPS support for the iPhone, but I have been getting a lot of posts and emails about adding more locations to courses and I want to explain the current state of iPhone GPS limitations based on my experience which helps to explain how we will evolve out GPS support.
It is probably useful to state that the GPS in the iPhone was probably designed to be useful for getting directions to places within a city, and getting a reading quickly to accuracy of a few hundred meters is generally sufficient for figuring out how to get to the nearest restaurant. Golf, though, requires a much more detailed value and, while the iPhone can ultimately get you a reading that is pretty close, its GPS is not optimized for it. This goes for any application, not just TeeShot. In fact, you can generally see the exact same behavior in the Google Maps. Start it up somewhere and see how long it takes to get a very accurate (ie. small circle) response for where you are.
As part of the preview for version 1.5, I wrote a bit about the limitations of the iPhone’s GPS accuracy in a golf situation. You can read that here. After playing more rounds with it, I figured now would be a good time to write more about my experience using the GPS features of TeeShot regularly.
The earlier article was about accuracy. It said that the best result I had ever gotten was to an accuracy of 9 meters. 9 meters (~10 yards) is a big margin of error when choosing a golf club. It is almost always the difference between one club and the next. Today’s rounds on a course where I had used Google Maps to measure the center of the green showed that the number it gives you is pretty close to accurate, usually within 5 yards but it came at a price. In my experience with my test phones two things have really surfaced as limiting factors:
- It takes a LONG time for the GPS to get an accurate location. 15-30 seconds usually. This is tough when playing golf because you should be ready to hit your ball when you get to it and waiting 30 seconds for an accurate distance is pretty bad. It is also tough to tell when it has an accurate figure since it gives you a result quickly, but it is usually the last place you got a reading so you need to wait until it looks like you are about the right distance from your last shot, or to the green if you have those figures. That is a lot of waiting and focusing on the phone when you should be thinking about your shot.
- Getting GPS coordinates takes a LOT of battery power. My new iPhone 3G, which was fully charged before the round, was at 1/3 battery after nine holes. Doing regular scoring for the foursome for the rest of the round used very little battery power. It is the GPS that really drains the power.
So how does this impact the GPS features in TeeShot? I have received a lot of requests for a way to support more than just the middle of the green as a target. Users also want the front and the back of the green, front and back readings for hazards and bunkers and more. These are all terribly useful though they will also make it harder to define courses for TeeShot and they will also make using TeeShot more complicated. I am happy to continue to work on improved GPS functionality like this if this is what TeeShot users would like, but I think users’ satisfaction with these features will be limited until the iPhone itself can be tuned to get faster and more accurate readings without draining the battery.
As always, I am completely open to feedback on how you would like to see the application evolve.
See ya on the first tee!
-Chris
I would actually rather have an area in hole details, where the courseguide could be written and perhaps an image of the track (a bit like in birdie, which I envy for this feature).
When the GPS isn’t better…
And also I would like a more smooth way to type the scores of all 4 players - it is to difficult now. Isn’t it possible to make +/- just like when you type the scores for a single golfer?
/Kasper
By: Kasper on September 1, 2008
at 1:50 am
Chris,
First of all, I love TeeShot. I also love how responsive you are to your customers and do your best to accommodate their requests. Having said that, I don’t think it’s worth you investing a lot more time in GPS until Apple improves the hardware. There’s only so much you can do. I agree with you, that this is not going to be very satisfying for users. Worse, unsophisticated users may blame you and the software when really this is a hardware issue.
Instead, I would like to see you focus on usability for multiple players. The easier this is, the better the application will be. (I haven’t yet tried TeeShot with multiple players, so I don’t have any input yet.)
Keep up the good work. I am a very happy customer!
Mike
By: Michael S. Hyatt on September 1, 2008
at 6:04 am
Don’t let the noise push you into feature creep, Chris. Remember that people are less likely to take time to relate a “this is good like it is” experience than they are if they have something that they dislike. I don’t know anyone who has the time to mark all of those points on the course unless they’re part of the groundskeeping crew, and if they’re consulting all of those data points in-game, they’re holding people up behind them.
Keep up the good work - I’d personally address any bugs that might crop up in the GPS implementation, but I wouldn’t focus on expanding it.
By: D jones on September 1, 2008
at 7:28 am
My suggestion for long term would be to have the additional points on the course for distance, take a look at Green Finder, very nice presentation. But it is only a rangefinder, it does not have all the other functionality that Tee shot has. Their reviews also seem to indicate that it is very accurate and similar to skycaddy which I have. Over the next couple of weeks I will try and compare Tee shot with sky caddy for accuracy.
I would also agree with the others with the comment about multi-player support to mak eit easier to track and switch from my details back to the scorecard. I have not yet downloaded 1.5 becasue I have been out of town but will as soon as I gte home today and hopefully use it this next weekend.
Keep up the communication, very helpful and positive responses from the people who understand how important this has been to the development of Teeshot
By: John in FL on September 1, 2008
at 8:12 am
I agree with D Jones, that adding all the details will not work out that well. Getting a accurate lat long to the center of the green is plenty for now, till we have the proper, refined tool to do more complex setups, and even if we do, the quality of the data is also a huge problem.
Chris, possible to leave gps on at all times till the battery hits 20%? Once at 20% auto turn it off, so that we can finish scoring the round. That way, we get the most benefit from it, it being always on will give the best possible chance of getting a accurate reading in a short period of time. As sugguested in a earlier post, making the reading more accessible (currently nested in swing details) will greatly increase usability and usefulness.
By: Gary on September 1, 2008
at 7:18 pm
Hey Chris.. regarding the GPS functionality of 1.5 and courses with the info.. Would it be possible to check for updates on the courses already downloaded? maybe tag an update date or add date to the course listings?
Great App! Love what you’re doing with it.
By: Rich H. on September 1, 2008
at 7:38 pm
Chris,
I have tried to use the GPS feature on the course with a normal 4some, and like you said, it wasn’t user friendly. This is even after learning how to use it solo for many rounds with and without the GPS. With a 4some, macro scoring is a piece of cake, detailed scoring can be done with some practice, and GPS functionality with all of that is almost impossible. It’s almost a gwiz feature that can tell you how long you just hit your drive. That is what I’m gong to use it for…The worst part of it is, you can literally spend the entire round looking at your phone and not saying a word to anyone with all of the features that the program has LOL!! Talk about the Iphone making you anti-social haha.
Lastly, why does it not give me a handicap when I have 20 rounds in already. It say’s not enough rounds in that block.
Thanks and keep up the good work as usual..
By: Ben on September 1, 2008
at 7:38 pm
Hi Ben,
TeeShot should be giving you a handicap if you have enough rounds in, but it takes at least five 18 hole rounds. If you have that and still don’t see it, let’s follow up in email.
-Chris
By: teeshotlive on September 1, 2008
at 10:14 pm
Chris,
I think you should forget the GPS features for 2 reasons 1. The battery life & 2. the accuracy. I have loads of ideas that you could possibly add to the app.
1, When you turn the iphone you get a full scorecard ( I think this has already been mentioned )
2, To be able to see a picture of the hole with distances ie, stroke saver
3, Graphical statistics
4, Club distances screen to record how far you hit each club.
By: Marc Gent on September 2, 2008
at 4:41 am
Chris,
I’d recommend focusing on making TeeShot the absolute best scorecard solution for iPhone.
I think the iPhone’s hardware limitations make it a poor GPS device for golf yardages. Like Michael Hyatt said, most users will almost certainly blame TeeShot for inaccurate yardages, so there isn’t much to gain.
Features like images of holes, etc. would be a nice “scorecard” enhancement.
…and don’t forget my earlier request to email scorecards to other players at the end of a round!
Thanks for being so responsive to user comments and requests.
By: Sean on September 2, 2008
at 9:41 am
Chris,
First of all thanks for all the excellent work and extreme responsiveness to user comments and requests. Compliments!
A few things I noticed:
1. As you already wrote, Stableford is not working 100%. This is indeed true for the Me person, but there also seems some discrepancy (be it minimal) for the other players. How exactly is TeeShot calculating? (maybe that bit is just me).
2. I notice that in Rounds the tees have disappeared in version 1.5.
When I look back at a round I have played, there is no information anywhere on what tee was played. This is especially annoying if you have a 27 holes course with the 3 combinations that always change (my course I’m afraid).
Any chance of getting that fixed in the 1.5.1 or future version?
Thanks
By: Thierry on September 2, 2008
at 10:18 am
Hi Thierry,
I have found and fixed the issues with Stableford scoring. There were actually 2 problems. First we didn’t add up the scores correctly for the main player because we calculated the course handicap wrong there. The second was that we would not give the last stroke of your handicap to you so if your course handicap was a 12, the number 12 handicap hole would not get a stroke. Both of these have been fixed.
If you look in Round Details, you should still see the tees you played from.
-Chris
By: teeshotlive on September 2, 2008
at 12:41 pm
Chris,
Great, thanks!
With regard to Round Details I meant the tee not being visible under Scorecard.
Maybe simply make “Front 9″ and “Back 9″ editable. Or, link them to a teeset (again mainly in case of 27 holes combinations (my course), but that would probably also require a change in CourseBuilder…)
It is convenient if you quickly look up a result under Rounds and immediately find out which 9 + 9 (of the 27 or more) holes were played.
(In the end I think I would love to see a more traditional scorecard, even if that requires to rotate the iPhone for optimal view…)
Today I played in a foursome and tried to use all advanced functions, including GPS.
My humble conclusion is that GPS simply takes up too much time and seems inaccurate.
Although I recently made some progress, I don’t think I really made drives of 503, 478 or 450 meters as registered by the GPS
I think implementing an option to display a picture of each hole, with distances (possibly editable) would currently provide more added value to your program than digging deeper into the GPS options/possibilities.
I have another question/request with regards to Statistics.
As a golf novice I have filled in my first few rounds I played a few years back.
As I made some progress, they distort (some of) the statistics (also because I could not fill in all data, e.g. putting etc.).
Is it possible to implement the choice of a timeframe for Statistics? E.g. being able to choose statistics from date x to date y, or for the last n rounds?
After today’s round my friends were all pretty impressed by TeeShot - and extremely happy that the Stableford score did not work for me
Only a bit of a shame that I had to copy our scores to a paper scorecard that I had to scan and then send to them as an attachment to my email…
I will most definitely silence them if you could kindly implement the option to email scorecards (possibly with Stableford included).
Thanks again for your availability and responsiveness!
Thierry
By: Thierry on September 2, 2008
at 4:52 pm
Definitely a must have feature in future version : send score card to one or more email addresses (see Thierry) : the fact printing from iPhone directly is lacking, makes this the only way to have a CPU stored document everyone can read/print (you yourself as a TeeShot user AND your friends players not having iPhone and/or TeeShot)
By: Patrick on September 3, 2008
at 2:58 am
Having used Intelligolf for Palm for years, one recommendation I can make for the multiple-player scoring would be for the stroke and putt fields to auto-advance on digit entry (with the exception that entering a “1″ for the score would not advance to the putt field as a 2-digit score is likely).
Also, it would be really helpful if “fairway” could be marked directly from the multiple-player score sheet.
By: Ren on September 3, 2008
at 3:37 pm
My recommendation for the multi-player question, as others have stated, is that it needs to be simple and quick to go from my scoring to the multi-player scoring page. Add an additional button to the bottom so that you can easily get to the multi-player page from anywhere.
By: John in FL on September 3, 2008
at 6:31 pm
My recommendation for getting a good club distance calculator. since I won’t use GPS again. Battery life and time….
Is to reverse calculate it.
say on a par 4. when you are filling in the club info. have the gps option or enter todays playing yardage. its normally 360 but today the tees are up so its 350.
Then my second shot was from 125 to the center of the green. My drive was 225.
My second shot was at the center of the green. 125 yard 9 iron gets calculated.
I tried to explain that quickly. I may not have done it well, but I think it would be useful. hopefully you understand, but if not, email me.
By: Andrew on September 3, 2008
at 10:33 pm
There is no point using GPS if its not accurate enough. I would like to have a list of my clubs and how far I can hit them maybe link it to the new app PracticeTee. ie, Driver 330 , 3 Wood 250 …
I really like this app and I think a few more versions this will be the best app for the iPhone.
Nearly every golfer I know has a iPhone and TeeShot so being able to email a scorecard or create a pdf scorecard is a must for me.
Keep up the good work.
Marc
By: Marc in England on September 4, 2008
at 2:00 am
Chris,
Everything you have said about GPS seems logical but I wonder how other applications have gotten theirs to be very similar if not the same as a sky caddy as mentioned in a couple of reviews for GreenFinder. These reviews seem to indicate they are very accurate, how did they do it?
Just wondering.
By: John in FL on September 4, 2008
at 9:37 am
Hi John,
If you can wait long enough, you can get a pretty accurate reading. When the iPhone says it is accurate to 9 meters, it is pretty close to what other GPS devices will say. The problem is that it sometimes takes >30 seconds to get that accurate of a reading.
-Chris
By: teeshotlive on September 4, 2008
at 11:05 am
The GPS accuracy on IPHONEs, is it a software or hardware problem ?, should we wait for next IPHONE generation to get better GPS reads, as SKY CADDY ?
By: Mike on September 4, 2008
at 5:57 pm
I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that the faster GPS chips use more battery power so it is at least partly a hardware issue.
-Chris
By: teeshotlive on September 4, 2008
at 6:59 pm
Chris,
Having used the new gps features last week in live on a golf course, i would have to agree with all of those that say teeshot should be a scorecard app first and foremost. The gps part of the program was terribly painful to use, confusing at first with the start locating, stop locating vs save location, etc. Not to mention that the gps wasn’t very accurate unless as you mentioned, you are willing to wait an unusual amount of time. When first trying to locate, the accuracy range would give an outrageous range (probably corresponds to how in google maps, the circle starts wide, then if you wait long enough then it gets smaller and more accurate) and i just didn’t have the patience to wait. not to mention, the drain on battery life was way too much.
Given the above and unless apple can improve the gps lock time, i think you’ve taken the gps portion as far as you could (with the exception of the UI portion of GPS functionality, could be more friendly and less confusing).
I think aside from making your app the best scorecard functionality as possible, what would be nice is the following from a feature list:
1) upload of rounds to the web (so we don’t lose the data) or to csv for import into excel or something. basically a way for us to have a record of the rounds outside of the iphone.
2) perhaps add “maps” of holes with yardage markers or ways of estimating yards to the green, which i believe would be ultimately more useful than gps functionality given my experiences using the gps last week. bottom line is we all want yardages to the green and maps would help in that process. though i think this might be very difficult to do………..
By: Eric on September 6, 2008
at 10:12 pm
I’ve done three rounds with the GPS (a 9 hole round & two 18 hole rounds).
Had no problems with the 9 hole round. After reading some of the comments here - my routine was to start the GPS a few steps before I reached the tee box (or ball) so it would get a head start. When doing that, waiting time to get decent accuracy wasn’t so bad.
On the 18 hole rounds (both recording the green locations & some shots) - I found I could do perhaps 10 holes without running out of juice. I did the same as before - its getting me to consider an external battery pack to extend the life (or perhaps have the GPS on almost all the time).
Side note - on one round, I was playing with another iPhone user - you may get another sale out of that round.
Too bad the 1.6 version has been uploaded - I noted a few “bugs” I had hoped to be fixed (related to the “third putt”) but if the updates come out monthly or so until the application stabilizes, I can certainly wait.
Keep up the good work.
–Mark
By: Mark on September 7, 2008
at 1:58 pm
Hi Mark,
I actually fixed a few issues related to 3rd putt in 1.6, I just didn’t list it as a feature. Let me know if the problems you’re seeing are still there after 1.6 is out.
-Chris
By: teeshotlive on September 7, 2008
at 4:53 pm
There’s no way to make this product everything for everybody. Please don’t try.
Given the limitations of GPS on the iPhone, I can’t imagine many serious golfers depending on TeeShot as a GPS rangefinder or for truly usable shot distance data. I use a SkyCaddie for that anyway.
What I value TeeShot for is the scoring detail and shot quality statistics. I paid my $20 for the ability to keep my buddy’s score while I also detail my strokes, hits, and misses directly into a database. Please focus on developing these kinds of functions. I’d love to see expanded capability to manage skins games. I’d love to see the new backup function develop into a new online data management and visualization tool.
It would also be wonderful for such an online service develop into a real USGA handicapping service, but I know that to be more of USGA’s issue than TeeShot’s (They continue to think the country club paradigm to be the only model for today’s golfers.).
So again, please don’t worry about making TeeShot a rangefinder for a device that will likely never have the hardware to support it. Keep your focus on after-the-shot statistics.
No matter what, great product!
By: John ABQ on September 7, 2008
at 7:29 pm
this doesnt apply to me since i am an ipod user, but has anyone noticed the battery life using gps to be better with 2.1, because that is one of the updates that 2.1 brought with it.
By: Zack on September 25, 2008
at 9:30 pm
I’m sorry but the GPS is good enough. When it is telling you that the accuracy is 50 yards, it’s just that it at worst 50 yards but it is usually 4 to 5 yards from the exact location.
I did buy teeshot not to get a magnified scorecard, but as a tool to get lower score, so I would like to get a better interface, in meters, to the G¨PS part of this program.
By: jpb on October 10, 2008
at 2:00 pm