Exploring the Usability and Suitability of Smartphone Apps for Precise and Rapid Mapping Applications

Abstract

This study explored the usability and suitability of freely available smartphone positionig apps for precise and rapid mapping applications. The study takes eight smartphone applications (GPS Data, Geo-location, Map coordinate, My GPS location, Mobile Topographer, Super GEO GPS, UTM GEOMAP and GNSS logger Application) and Garmin Map76s handheld GPS into consideration with observations from Hi-Target V30 GNSS receiver as basis for comparison. Eleven stations distributed all over the main Campus of Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria were used for the study. The study treated Garmin Map76s and seven smartphone applications (GPS Data, Geo-location, Map coordinate, My GPS location, Mobile Topographer, Super GEO GPS, and UTM GEOMAP) first. Garmin Map76s turns out to be the best with an RMSE value less than 0.3m on both easting and northing components. UTM GEOMAP gave the best result among the seven smartphone applications with and RMSE value of 0.3m on both easting and northing. The GNSS logger application used on a Samsung galaxy S9+ was later treated separately and compared its performance alongside the Hi-Target V30 observation. The application performed well at most of the stations but showed less precision to the Hi-Target V30 observation but assumably better than the oyther positioning apps.