I was in an Uber the other day. I used their Share ETA feature in the app so my friend could track my ride. In parallel, I shared my live location using HyperTrack Live (iOS, Android). This is how the two experiences stacked up for my friend who recorded the tracking session on Safari.

What am I looking for?

0:00-0:03 - Something seemed off in the Uber experience. The ETA showed 13 minutes but the vehicle was stuck at the same point as the last time he had loaded the page half an hour ago.

0:04-0:17 - My friend hit the refresh button to see if things changed and indeed they did. The vehicle had moved closer to the destination and ETA had updated to 15 minutes.

0:18-0:25 - The ETA switched to 12 minutes right after loading the screen at 15 minutes. He waited a bit longer to see the changes in vehicle orientation suggesting movement. The view was zoomed out to see the entire trip and the forward movement was not visible due to the zoom level.

0:26-0:27 - My friend switched the browser tab to HyperTrack's location tracking experience for the same ride.

0:28-0:49 - Upon switching context to HyperTrack, the view automatically animated the vehicle to the latest point, updated the ETA along with it, and modified the zoom level to show movement to the destination. The view panned and zoomed automatically as the vehicle moved. Unlike in the Uber interface, my friend could zoom in and out of the screen and control the view. A trailing polyline showed the route covered, elapsed distance and duration.

What else did I miss?

Had my friend tapped on the status card on HyperTrack, it would have shown him my current speed and battery level as well.

HyperTrack powers a slick in-app tracking experience as well. With Uber, my friend did not have the option to track my ride through his Uber app.

What do I do?

If you are building an application that involves movement tracking of your rides, build with HyperTrack today.