GPS

GPS is an iPhone and iPad app that shows live readouts from your phone's GPS receiver: position, speed, altitude and accuracy. They come as a plain list, as fullscreen instruments, and as a dashboard you arrange yourself.

It shows what the receiver reports right now and nothing else. There are no accounts, no servers, no analytics and no network use at all. The only things it remembers between launches are how you have arranged the dashboard and the unit each section of the list is read in.

Every reading is there: position, altitude above sea level and above the ellipsoid, ground speed, vertical speed and course, with each accuracy beside the reading it applies to, then how often fixes arrive and where they come from. Coordinates read in decimal or degrees-minutes-seconds, altitudes and accuracies in metres or feet, and ground speed in m/s, mph, km/h or knots.

Tap any reading for a fullscreen instrument — a speed dial, a variometer, an altitude ruler, accuracy rings, a compass rose, a graticule or a cadence ring — each with a rolling two-minute trace. The same instruments are drawn live in miniature at the head of each row in the list.

GPS follows the same tenets as Vault: it should use modern platform features, and it should do one job well. There are no recorded tracks, no exports, and no settings beyond the dashboard and the units.