July 21, 2015

We are thrilled to announce a major update to our free Bad Elf GPS utility app, version 3.0, is now available in the iTunes App Store for download. This is the first complete re-write of the app from the ground up since we released our first iOS app back in 2010.

The primary goal of our app is to support our Bad Elf GPS hardware accessories — checking the health of the hardware, transferring trip logs, performing firmware updates, and other utility functions. We’ve streamlined these essential functions and added some new features you’ll find useful while in the air, on the water, or in the field.

The first thing we did was create a fresh new design, color scheme, and layout that’s optimized for every device that runs iOS 8. The app takes full advantage of the screen real estate on both the iPad and iPhone. We also provide a day/night mode setting, perfect for night flights and other adventures.

Next, we focused on streamlining the core features of our app. The new Live Gauges show your GPS data, and even work with the internal GPS if you don't have a Bad Elf GPS connected. Transferring and managing multiple trips is now a breeze, and you'll love the new trip map views with integrated graphs of speed, altitude, and distance over time. Trips can now be shared directly to Twitter or Facebook, or exported to apps such as CloudAhoy, Google Earth, or MotionX GPS.

For our GNSS Surveyor users, we’ve created a new Deviation Plot view that shows your position and horizontal accuracy over time. This is handy for visualizing the reported accuracy and position converge down to 1 meter or better, depending on sky visibility and your geographic location. The plot’s center point can be configured to be a known benchmark, a weighted average of historical points, or the last reported position.

One of the reasons we’re so excited about this new release is that it gives us a solid foundation moving forward to build new features and take full advantage of the iOS platform updates such as iOS 9 and watchOS 2 coming this fall.

Another reason we’re excited: our app is now built on the same Bad Elf SDK framework we share with our app partners. This toolkit allows apps to use all of the advanced features and GPS data available from our hardware to provide the best user experience possible. Using a common base means that as we make improvements and release new GPS products in the future, our app partners will be ready as well.

To check out all of the new features in detail, view the Bad Elf GPS App page. Then visit the App Store to download and upgrade today.

As always, we're here to help answer any questions! Just drop a note to support@bad-elf.com.

Update: Maintenance Release (v3.0.1 2015.07.20)