Birkett Enterprise Ltd

HockeyApp provides a way to distribute betas and collect live crash reports. We integrated it with the Phonelocator alpha. You can download Phonelocator form HockeyApp here.

An alpha version of Phonelocator for Android is available here!

The app supports GPS and network location methods. You can enable and disable GPS from the settings. If GPS is disabled the network location provider will be used. It´s possible to configure how long the app waits for a GPS signal before giving up. If a GPS signal can´t be found, the app falls back to network location.

The registration process is more intuitive than the Symbian version. When you start the app for the first time, a web page pops up in the app where you can log in or register for the service. After logging in you´re returned to the app automatically.

So far we´ve used 55 hours creating Phonelocator for Android (a tiny fraction of the time spent on the Symbian version). There´s still loads of features to add:

• Update version IMEI/IMSI to server
• Prettiness – icons, nicer lists etc
• Passcode protected settings and uninstall
• Buddy message – a message that is sent to a known “buddy” number when the SIM card in the phone is changed.

Most of the settings on the web site releate to the Symbian version. However, it is possible to enable and disable updates from the web site and change the update frequency. The phone´s IMEI and IMSI numbers (and the app´s version number) are not updated to the web site and consequently is currently only possible to have one Android app per account.

Phonelocator for Android is free and open source. The source code is hosted on Github here. If anybody wants to get involved in the development please get in touch

The app has been tested on a Samsung Galaxy S2. I´ve been updating every 10 mins and running the app has not made any perceivable difference to battery life. Please let us know your experiences with it.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, Android overtook Symbian as the world’s most popular smartphone operating system. We want to make Phonelocator available to as many users as possible, so choosing Android as the first platform to port Phonelocator to was a no-brainer.

The work has begun. Our plan is to have the first version ready for release by the end of the summer. Check the screen shots below:

I thought that we should conclude 2010 with a blog post looking back at the past year.

In January, Birkett Enterprise launched a new phone tracking service, Phonelocator Periodic. Unlike the previous Phonelocator service, retrospectively dubbed Phonelocator Trail,  Phonelocator Periodic can be run in the background on the phone all the time without a noticeable effect on the phone’s battery life. Despite Phonelocator Trail‘s battery saver and intelligent update features, running the application constantly was not an option on some phones. This was because the drain on the battery caused by the GPS (especially A-GPS which requires an open data context) was too great. Phonelocator Periodic solves this problem by opening the GPS periodically rather than holding it open all the time when the phone is moving. This results in an application that can be run in the background all the time without a perceivable effect on battery life. The cost of this approach is the detail of the information recorded; rather than seeing a trail  it’s only possible to see discrete points on the map.

At the time of writing, Phonelocator Periodic has been downloaded more than 934787 times from the Nokia Ovi store which has resulted in more than 200,000 registrations on the web site.

A new version of Phonelocator Periodic app for Symbian OS, version 1.0,  was completed in December and Symbian Signed and will be available on the Ovi store just as soon as it has completed the Ovi Store’s QA process. The new version boasts: lost phone alarm, passcode protected uninstall, hidden trigger messages, better GPS accuracy and more positioning methods.

In August, Birkett Enterprise launched Phonelocator Text, an application to send a phone’s location as a link in a text message to another phone. The application is available on the Ovi store here. In October, the application was updated to support the Arabic, Russian, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Norwegian languages.

This year Birkett Enterprise have collaborated with a Brazilian company, VIA Rastreamento, to developed a tracking application to compliment VIA Rastreamento‘s existing tracking service that uses bespoke tracking hardware.

After running Phonelocator Trail on Dreamhost servers since it’s launch in July 2008, this year we moved both Phonelocator Trail and Phonelocator Periodic to Linode servers.  Dreamhost disabled the Phonelocator service because despite running on it’s own virtual server it was “loading down the entire host”. So far, Birkett Enterpise are very happy with the Linode service and their customer service who have dealt with queries promptly and courteously.

Our hopes for 2011 are:

• More Symbian OS apps based on the Phonelocator code base
• Improved Phonelocator web application
• Android based tracking client

Happy new year!