iHound is a Daveworld Inc app. Basically, it’s a tracking system that works off your GPS feature on the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. It costs $3.99 to download.
Alright, first thing you have to do when you load this app up is a notice that you must make an iHound subscription off their site.
Update: The pricing is now up on the iHound app’s iTunes description. The one time payment of $3.99 when you buy the app is for the first 3 months of service. Then a $10.99 yearly payment plan for the subscription.
At first glance, this app is to track your phone if you lose it somewhere. The app works by constantly running your device’s GPS every 30 seconds. I don’t know about you, but my iPhone’s battery drops by 5% for checking my email on 3Gs. In 2 hours and 36 minutes, my 100% battery life dropped to 20% and it’s almost painful when you want to actually USE the iPhone for any purpose.
It has a siren alarm that will play until you shut it down from a website and has different configurations that try to trick a thief. Well I figure that if I just plugged the iPhone into my computer after it runs out of juice, reset the software and remove this little app, then the iPhone is mine. Done and done.
Seriously… you might have some use for this if you were careless for a moment and lose it… but you’d have better luck calling it with a friend’s phone. If someone stole it, then it’s gone. Doesn’t matter if you can try and track it via computer since the iPhone will die in 2 hours from the massive battery drain.
It’s a great idea, with a positive motive, but it fails in execution and I now have to charge my batteries again since I ran the app to do a review of it.
Here is a video demo of the iHound app on the iPhone
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The App’s default setting, PowerSave Tracking mode, checks-in every 10 minutes, and in between check-ins the App actually is suspended and so does not drain your battery. Also, you must put the app in the background by pressing the “Home” key, otherwise the app will be running in the foreground and will drain the battery as the GPS is constantly on in this state. At the end of the day, we believe iHound offers a lot of value to our tens of thousands of end-users for less than a cup of coffee a month to protect their iPhone…
If you or anyone has any problems with iHound, please do not hesitate to contact us over Twitter, @ihoundsoftware, or at help@ihoundsoftware.com. We do have excellent, dedicated customer service… and so far, every case we’ve seen regarding battery drainage where the customer contacted us for help turned out to be usage errors, and those people are now happy iHound customers 😉 Thanks!
Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 1:27 pm by iHound Software