Location tracking is great when you’re, well, tracking, but it’s not the only avenue to deliver location. Not every use-case needs or wants continuous location tracking, sometimes they just want the location at certain points in time. So, if you don’t need tracking but do need location, consider using our Get Current Location SDK method. Why? It gives you record-breaking location accuracy!
I’ll walk you through the basics of what you can do with Get Current Location, and how you can get location accuracy within 1-meter.
How it works
Get Current Location is a one-shot function to get the current location of a user. You solely focus on getting the location of a device once, and won’t spend the time and energy on tracking a user over a period of time. Tracking modes are pretty busy with a lot more than just getting the location, and although accurate by their own right, Get Current Location just goes that one step further.
It allows you to set an accuracy variable and then a time variable for the SDK to know what accuracy you want within a timeframe. Through that, you can get location data within 1-meter. That being said, the time and accuracy variable inputs are determined by the developer’s preference. If Get Current Location can’t get the location in the requested accuracy and at the requested time frame, it'll deliver the best it can with the time it was given. Consider the scenario where the required accuracy is 5 meters and the timeout value is 20 seconds. In that case, within 20 seconds or maybe less (depending on location), the SDK will try to get the location with an accuracy value of 5m. In case the SDK fails to get the 5m accuracy within 20s it will return the best accuracy the SDK receives in that region.
Check the code snippet to get an idea of how the time and accuracy variables are determined.
Use-Cases
As we said, developers choose the time and accuracy variables, but this decision ultimately comes down to the use-case, and industry you’re in. So what industries could this apply to? Let’s look at some examples.
For delivery (including last-mile delivery), the courier can drop off a package, take a photo, and then activate Get Current Location. The customer then receives a notification and the location of their package to collect it. Not every delivery scenario would require this but consider a customer who’s not home. The courier can leave their package at a neighbor, and the customer can check their phone to see where it was left and pick it up whenever they get back.
In food delivery, the customer can give their current live location so the courier has a better idea of where exactly they are. This is useful in densely populated areas with large apartment complexes.
The same idea can apply to ride-hailing. Pickups happen on the side of a street where there really isn’t a house address to base the pickup location from. Get Current Location allows drivers to see where on a street their customer is in real-time. You see, while live tracking is useful for the customer to track the location of the courier/driver, it’s not as relevant for the courier/driver since the customer’s location is fixed (most of the time). That’s where Get Current Location comes in.
Get started, Get Current Location
Getting that location accuracy down to 1 meter is all about helping improve the location services of apps. Whatever the use-case, highly accurate location technology is to the benefit of the user, whether that be an employee or customer.
Have questions and want to know more about Get Current Location? Don’t hesitate to contact us today!