iPhone App Attempts to Fake Your Location

A new iPhone app plays background noise to fool people into thinking you’re somewhere you aren’t. Unfortunately it doesn’t do a very good job.

The purpose of Fake Call Locations is pretty funny: The app includes 15 sounds emulating noise in certain locations, such as a night club, a traffic jam, a casino and so on. So with the app the idea is to get out of an awkward phone call by playing a sound and saying something like, “Sorry babe, I’m at church. I’ll call you back later.”

It’s the execution that’s a big problem. Using the app isn’t smooth at all: When making a call, you have to switch to speakerphone, then launch the Fake Call Locations app and select a sound. That’s a lot of fumbling around just to lie to someone about where you are — as opposed to, say, not picking up the phone at all.

And the results aren’t impressive, either. I tested the app by calling a few friends and they could barely hear the fake sounds. Since you have to use speakerphone, you have to count on the sounds playing through your iPhone speaker to drown out all the other noise wherever you are. You’d need to be in a silent room for this app to work well.

“Hey Pam,” I said. “I’m at a night club. Can you hear it?”

“Huh?” she replied. “I don’t hear anything at all. You sound like you’re at work. And you never go to night clubs. Also, it’s 11 in the morning.”

Fail.

The app would be better if it could directly integrate itself into the iPhone’s phone app, but Apple doesn’t allow developers to mess with that. Long story short: Funny idea that doesn’t deliver; it’s probably not worth your $1.