One of the best features of any great smartphone is the way it can determine where you are. Today, GPS (aka Global Positioning System) is everywhere. You can find GPS systems in your car, on your smartphone, and even in a watch. GPS helps you track where you are and get to where you are going.

GPS works in several different ways and uses multiple components working together to pinpoint your location. By using data from satellites, a GPS receiver can measure the distance by using radio signals. These signals assist in locating a specific point, which is called trilateration. Similar to trilateration, triangulation uses the help of cell towers and Wi-Fi networks to determine locations. This triangulation method is used to pinpoint an accurate recording of the user's location data.

The accuracy of your location may vary depending on your environment, available cell towers, or what's known as a cold start. A cold start is when you turn your phone on for the first time since manufacturing, after a factory reset, or if your phone was off for a long period of time. Accurate recordings of your location may not work very well if you are inside a house, a building, or if your phone is on low power mode. It can take several minutes to acquire an accurate position while it goes through the cold start routine. These interferences are known as obstacles, things that may hinder satellite connection and prevent data working in real-time.

busybusy uses what’s called GPS Breadcrumbing. This is used to ensure a longer battery life of a user's phone while still collecting breadcrumb pins of their location. These recordings take place when the user's location changes by a significant distance: roughly 500 meters. busybusy doesn’t determine these changes, we simply register with iOS to ask them when there is a significant location change. The system controls the parameters that trigger these significant locations. Practically speaking, busybusy doesn’t have to worry about these details; the system switches between the various ways of getting a location and sends the location to us. Once we have a location, Android follows the same logic as iOS. However, we don’t have the same location Application Programming Interface that iOS has, so we’ve built our own. Androids use the geofence technology that is triggered when the user moves 150 meters away from their previous location.