Reviewed on a Blackberry

The WeGolf GPS golf app is one of the few we have tried that is available for virtually every type of GPS smartphone in the market, so that is a big benefit. We tried the Blackberry version and found it to be very easy to install and use with clear and intuitive navigation.

Downloading courses was easy and there were a large number of courses to choose from although maybe not as many as other systems. However it is easy and good fun to map your own course using their online mapping tool. This uses Google maps and the interface is easy to understand and you can also add your own types of distances such as a ridge in the fairway or green to suit the course. Each course takes about 15 minutes to do and we enjoyed doing this but you do need to plan ahead if you were going away. Obviously the Google maps can only zoom in so far so getting the exact point of a green starting or the edge of a bunker has to be done very carefully to be accurate.

On the course the display of distances and annotations is very clear and easy to use and the distances updated quickly. The scoring element is very good and you can record the club and distance for each full shot as distances around the green become a little fiddly. This information is uploaded in real time over the phone network to the WeGolf Web Community so you can use a Google map of the course with a 'Tourcast' style feature to see where you went and what club you used and how far it went. You can also publish this to your friends so they can follow you round in real time which is a nice touch. There is also the feature to combine several phones to create tournament leaderboards too.

Compared to a standalone GPS unit the WeGolf app is going to be handicapped by the quality of the GPS function of the handset you use, but on the Blackberry Bold 9700 we had it was fine. The main difference is the quality of the mapping as the Google Maps can only be zoomed in so far so the mapping is maybe not as accurate as someone wlaking the ground, but all maps, even those already created, are easily edited.

The Web Community functionality is very good and the live scoring and online maps of your round are features non-smartphone GPS cannot match. For an app the cost and subscription are a little on the high side, but we still feel it is good value, especially of you like mapping your own courses.