Golf Match up!

I will begin by saying, Congratulations to all the golf application developers out there. You have over exceeded the expectations of what a golf application can do and with all respect, took advantage of every nook and cranny that the iPhone has to offer to bring us the best experience on a golf outing.

As I contemplate and write this article, I think it’s suffice to say that this article warrants a blog for all the golf applications that will be released in the next few days. We have amazing golf applications that are constantly evolving right before our eyes and believe me, reviewing every one of them and deciding the method to the madness is one heck of a task.

In the next coming days, perhaps weeks, we will bring to you our deep analysis and review of each application and hopefully, by the time you read through each application, you can decide what suits best for your outing. We do plan to have a showdown between these applications but that is slated for a later time.

If your golf application has been left out, please feel free to contact me and we can try to include them here. Please do note that most of the golf application developers were contacted several weeks ago prior to this posting and if you were one of the developers to have opted out, well, more money to another developer.

In addition, we also did handpick top golf applications that we considered top of their game (no pun intended). Perhaps, we may have been biased but we wanted to give you our full head-on, no BS review that will give you the feeling to have purchased the best bang for your buck.

Lastly, every application was field tested during an outing to see whether functionality and workflow wise, it works. Sometimes simple is better, but we’ll see as you read on.

So let’s begin.

First and foremost , we broke down how we were going to review this and that was we simply asked two questions.

1. Does it keep score?
2. What make this application awesome?

So what does every golfer (who has an iPhone) want from a golf application? Yes, you got it, a scorecard.

At some point in time, golf application developers had first asked this question and perhaps even contemplated this with not having a full understanding of the capabilities that they can bring to an iPhone, so, the simplest thing to address was a scorecard, a way to sum up your score and move away from the primitive scorecards.

This is where we, as reviewers, will use as a baseline to see whether the application does what is going to be sought after.

Of course, as the application went through its development life cycle, we could only expect that the details of strokes versus putts came into mind. How about whether we hit a fairway, bunker, rough, etc.? How about what clubs we used at that time?

Simply enough, this is what whatsoniphone.com will first look for…does it keep track of your score and will it give you the level of detail if you wanted to?

Secondly, in our quest for reviewing the best app, the second thing we look for are the perks. We consider this to be things that go above and beyond than just keeping score. In our review process, these are the items that we consider that are perks, I’ll give a little detail of each of what I mean.

1. Scorecard information (Slope rating, par, handicaps, etc.)

Most of the golf applications today have accomplished this, even tying the application to one of the many online sites out there such as oobgolf.com, usga.com, etc. to pull in the information so that you have the most and current course information available. I remember when iPhone golf applications first came out and you had to contact the developer to include the course in their database. After a few days, then it would be available for you to use.  This is still happening to some but it’s slowly becoming obsolete.

2. Multiple golfers.

This is good to have but not essential. You want to enjoy your time on the course rather than caddy the entire day trying to keep everyone’s score and details in check. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome addition. Once again, this is becoming a standard in many golf applications.

3. Backup, restore, email, oh my.

This is very important, in my opinion. You keep score all day and what do you do with it? Well, given the ability to back it up online for viewing later or email it directly to yourself or a friend. Now you can have bragging rights.

4. Online Integration

This tie back to the first perk, however, the capability to upload it to an official online golf site and tracks your handicap and provides you detail statistics over a course of time (obviously). In addition, includes the ability to pull golf news information, golf course information and directions, the possibilities are infinite.

5. Ranger Finder

You thought I forgot about this one, eh? This is by far one of the coolest things to have. As all golfers know, a premium of monthly fees and roughly about $150+ for actual GPS rangefinders is excruciatingly expensive. Well, these golf application developing geniuses decided to use the build-in GPS within the iPhone and have it act as a GPS Range Finder. For those who don’t know what it is, essentially, it will tell you on the golf course, how far you are to the hole, which in return, allows you to choose your clubs more wisely. This is not limited to that but can also be used to mark the distance you hit the ball.

What’s the catch? Well, depending on how well these golf applications are developed and how well established and extra time they have, making a GPS range finder work is most probably the simplest task. Acquiring and mapping out every map out there would probably be the harder task. Of course, if an application doesn’t have the course mapped, you do have the capability to map it yourself, using Google Maps or Live Maps and if you’re lucky enough, the developers will do it for you, upon request. As I write this, give it a few more months and this blurb is probably no longer an issue.

The older golf applications seems to be adding courses every day and if you do a bit of research, if they have GPS range finding capabilities, expect to see them flaunt how many courses they have mapped on their online site. It’s definitely a feat and can be a deciding factor on which application to go with.

6. Battery Consumption

There is no if, ands, or buts about this. Battery will be consumed. However, we did feel that battery usage efficiency is something we should take into consideration. Especially since some of the application actually went one step ahead and addressed battery concerns, such as the ability to put the phone on standby when you put it back into your pocket using the light sensor. That’s neat!

7. and Others

I know that the last perk may be a bit generic but this category really addresses specifically all the other stuff that developers try to cram into the application, usually after they have addressed the aforementioned topics above. For example, green break meter, golf news and information, camera access, etc.

These items are not really essential but it’s good to have, as long as, the application isn’t too bloated.

So here we are. What you see before you is what makes or break the review of these applications. As I have stated earlier in my post, we have field tested each one of these applications to ensure that it is something that is feasible to use on the course.

Hopefully, the rest of the developers who are looking to improve their application take into consideration these baselines to ensure that they cover everything that an application should do.

Keeping it simple or risking it becoming bloated can be a balancing act. Taking this into consideration, we wanted to ensure we review the application for what it’s worth rather than how many perks once can cram into the application.

After all, we are all out there to enjoy golf and not to play with our iPhone. Fooooooorrrreeeee!