Over the last decade, mobile GPS units on the golf course have become pretty popular. I was never one to use a GPS unit, I always preferred to use a rangefinder. Even if I played a course with GPS on the cart I would typically get my yardage from the rangefinder.
Over the last five years though, ever since the first iPhone came out, there has been no shortage of apps designed to use your phone as the actual GPS unit. All you would have to do is download the app and pick what golf course you were playing. It has become increasingly easier over the years as well, and it seems most of these companies have been trying to one up each other with features.
Recently, I had a chance to download and test out another one of these apps. It is called Mobitee. Over the last year I have not really tested out many of these on my iPhone because like I said above, I really prefer to use a rangefinder and I am not going to pay the $25 or $30 or more on an app I am not going to use. So really the only way I am going to ever test them is if I am offered a free download in exchange for a review on Front9Back9 Golf Blog, which is what Mobitee offered me.
I was really interested in only the golf courses in San Antonio, where I live, but the app comes complete with 25,000+ courses across the world. The search process to find courses in your area is pretty simple. First you choose your country, then your state. There is not a city breakdown, which in my opinion is needed because I frankly could care a less about Dallas or Austin golf courses when I am trying to find a course in San Antonio. On the other hand, there is a “nearby” button which gives me all the courses in San Antonio, although the distance to the golf course from my “current location” is not very accurate. Once you find your course, you can click on it and view the phone number, address, website. If you are new to the area, you can click on the address and it will send you to the Google GPS Map on your iPhone, which is helpful.
I chose to play Silverhorn, which is less than 2 miles from my house. From the first tee box, it gives you a satellite view of the hole with the total yardage. After I hit my first tee shot and got to my ball, I wanted to watch how quickly the Mobitee app updates yardage, and it happened to be pretty quick. Not as quick as my rangefinder, but good enough I guess. On the other hand, the yardage was off. My rangefinder said I was 278 to the flag. The Mobitee app said I was 303 to the center of the green. From the closest sprinkler head was 284 to the center of the green, which was behind me. The difference in distance between my rangefinder and Mobitee app was pretty significant. I also attempted to use the rangefinder feature from the Mobitee app, which uses the iPhone camera to pick up on the flag. It didn’t even pick the flag up from that far away, which is figured it wouldn’t anyway. Either way, I was laying up anyway, so my 6 iron went on it’s way to a nice little 124 yards left to the green.
When I got to my layup, the rangefinder app did pick up on the flag this time and was pretty close to my actual rangefinder, just three yards off. The GPS also was pretty close to my rangefinder, only being 4 yards off from the center of the green. The rest of the round went pretty the same way. I started getting rushed on about the fifth hole so I stopped using the Mobitee app. I was able to get a pretty good idea of it’s features from the first four holes but in the end, I am a rangefinder dude.
The Mobitee Mobile Golf Assistant is a good app for people who prefer GPS systems on their phone. It is definitely worth trying out and could possibly be your new GPS system going forward. It does have quite a few golf courses. The accuracy was off on some holes but it was also pretty close on others. It is definitely worth trying out, and you can also win some golf gift cards and prizes by trying out Mobitee. You can get full contest details at the Mobitee site.
If you have tried Mobitee already, let me know what you think. If you haven’t tried it out, get the details from the Mobitee website and be sure to get signed up for the contest.
wade says
Every time i look on a gps for my phone it’s never right i always trust a dedicated range finder . i have the UPRO and now that they came out with a new version they changed the web site for downloading it. I will go back to the laser rangefinder.