Over the past couple of days I’ve been playing with two excellent location-aware apps for the iPhone.  The first, Twinkle, is a Twitter client that can use your location to find what other users of the app within a definable radius of you (down to as close as one mile) are talking about.  I’ve already found three or four interesting people here in Manchester thanks to it.

Then there’s Google’s Mobile Search app.  Location-based search has been going for a while, especially on Windows Mobile, but previous efforts have left a lot to be desired.  Google’s iPhone app makes location-based search so much simpler.  If I type in ‘Hairdressers’ I can instantly have a map of all  hairdressers close to where I currently am.  Another tap of the screen and I can call any of them.  It’s seamlessly brilliant.

I have to say, the dream of a mobile device can give you a wide variety of location-specific information is nearly here.  I say “nearly” for three reasons.

1. The apps aren’t perfect yet.  Google’s Mobile Search, as good as it is, doesn’t quite understand all the types of queries you might want to make.  Try typing in “Petrol Stations” and Google simply gives you a list of websites that mention petrol stations.  Lateral thinking may make you try “Gas Stations” (Google are American after all).  That’s no good either.  Type in “Gas” and you get a map displaying a mixture of a few petrol stations and a few CORGI-registered Gas engineers.  Definitely work to be done there, then.

2. Use of these apps isn’t wide enough yet.  Think how useful it would be if you were at Glastonbury Festival and you could see what everyone on Twitter was talking about within a mile radius of you.  Likewise, in a major crisis (maybe a terrorist attack or a natural disaster) local information becomes massively important.  As of yet, usage of these services is too disparate to make them truly useful in such a situation.

3. Most of the exciting developments around location-aware applications are taking place on the iPhone, a platform that has been available to developers for only four months.  Where are the exciting location aware apps for more mature platforms like S60 and Windows Mobile?  S60 devices have had GPS for over a year, Windows Mobile for longer, and the few applications that use it are based around search and mapping.  More innovative uses (like social media) are ignored by most developers.  Nokia have their excellent Sports Tracker and the new Nokia Chat Beta but how come other developers haven’t been rushing to bring us innovative location services?

Part of the reason they haven’t done so is that while using these sorts of apps is easy on the iPhone, its touch screen unencumbered by legacy features like a keypad, installing new software on an S60 or Windows Mobile device is more trouble than most people can be bothered with.

As for the future, I can see the iPhone surging ahead in this sector.  Its combination of an easy-to-use interface with a single point of access for all its apps (the iTunes App Store) means takeup will be quicker than rival apps on S60 and Windows Mobile.  Their interfaces, inherited from simpler times, make using these sort of applications harder for new users.  How Android, the newcomer on the mobile OS block, will fare remains to be seen but it certainly has an advantage over the old guard since it’s starting with a blank slate and has the might of Google behind it.

I’d seriously love S60, with its huge market share and powerful devices, to surge ahead in location services, but at the moment it doesn’t look likely.