Find My Friends by Apple (original): review

The Bottom Line: If you want to locate your friends that also have an iPhone 3Gs or better, this app is for you.

Location technologies:

GPS – Yes
Wi-fi access points – Yes
Cell-towers – No

Apple says: Find My Friends enables you to locate iOS devices only when they are on and connected to a registered Wi-Fi network or have an active data plan.

Translation: You need internet coverage such as Wi-Fi or 3G coverage for the app to work. If you turn off the “Enable 3G” and the “Cellular Data” you can’t connect to Find my friends.

Apple says: iCloud requires iOS 5 on iPhone 3GS or later, iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation), or iPad; a Mac computer with OS X Lion or later; or a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Outlook 2007 or 2010 or an up-to-date browser is required for accessing email, contacts, and calendars). Some features require a Wi-Fi connection. Some features are not available in all countries. Access to some services is limited to 10 devices.

Translation: You need a new Apple device to use this service, so go and buy a new one if you still have one of our early devices.

Accuracy/reliability:

We found that Find my Friends delivered really good accuracy of about 10-15 meters during our tests with full 3G coverage and a fairly good Wi-Fi access. Apple has chosen to not answer how accurate their service is, by searching for a while in their Apple community we got this answer “It can be as accurate as 10 meters”.

With Find My Friends you can hide your position; however you can’t tone down the accuracy and show a less accurate location. According to an article at the Apple Insider in March 2012 Apple is currently working on improving the privacy with variable location precision.

Availability/Versatility:

This app works in other countries even if you have Data roaming turned off but have access to WiFi.

Big minus is that it does NOT work on other phones than iPhones; you can’t track any other brands. (On the other hand this is typical for Apple).

Ease of use:

Simple and elegant application. Works with the phones notifications, the person invited gets a notification directly in the phone and can accept directly.

This app is also compatible with Siri on the iPhone 4S or iPhone 5. You only have to ask “where is my brother” and you will get a position of him directly on the phone (if you have a brother that is).

Design:

Elegant and simple design as always, however the design varies a lot from Apple’s other apps such as the Find My iPhone and iBooks. Apple has probably chosen leather and stitching to make it look friendlier and warmer contrary to the clean and stiff design as their normally use.

Privacy:

All your information needed for this app is already registered to Apple. You can read more and see the extensive Apple Privacy policy here http://www.apple.com/privacy/.

Pricing:

Free.

Refunds/guarantees:

None. It’s completely free.