Glove app review: how to find the best mobile network

It’s always super annoying to deal with a crappy mobile signal – not least because it’s never clear what the exact issue is. Is your phone just bad? Maybe you’re on the wrong network? It’s maddening, and with the long commitments inherent in mobile contracts, you don’t have the luxury to switch carriers willy-nilly until you find one that suits you.

Glove is an app that attempts to solve this problem, allowing you to find the best mobile carrier in the places you actually use your phone. Here’s how it works.

Finding a carrier that fits like a glove

For three days, the Glove app runs in the background of your phone, using GPS to note down your location. Ideally, during these days you’ll be at home, be at work, and be anywhere else that you spend a decent amount of time. It compares your current signal strength with crowd-sourced results from other mobile carriers in the same area.

After three days, it presents you with a selection of carriers; ideally these recommendations will provide you with the best possible signal strength and data speeds in your area. The app also shows you deals for each carrier to give you an idea of what’s available should you decide to switch.

My experience using the app

I ran Glove for three days, encompassing a pretty standard pattern for me – working at home, traveling to the Mobile Fun offices, and spending time in town. Once the three days are up, I got an excited notification… stating that the results would be coming soon.

A few minutes later, and the results were actually available. O2 (including giffgaff) were rated as the best (score 4.33/5), followed by EE (3.29), Vodafone (3.15) and my current carrier Three (1.68). I’ve had some issues with signal strength with Three, particularly indoors, compared to O2, so the ratings seem at least somewhat realistic.

The offers promised by the app were only available for O2, and required that someone actually call you up and give them to you (which I didn’t acquiesce to). There was also an option to ‘see plans’ for each carrier, but these merely took me to each carrier’s generic web store, without any specific recommendations. It was a bit disappointing after running the app for three days; I had expected something more personalised at this latter step.

Of course, it’s hard to tell how accurate the final results actually are. The cynical side of me suspects that the app will just refer you to the carrier that it gets the best bonuses from; ultimately this is a free app without ads so these referrals are the only way the developers will get paid. Hopefully though, the value of providing an accurate (and ethical) service will eclipse that of short-term money-making for the company.

Wrap-up

Ultimately, I’ve got mixed impressions of the Glove app. While the app is easy to use and seems to produce an accurate picture of carrier signal strength, there are still only four carriers it can compare between, none of which you’re likely to have overlooked.

I would have also liked to see a better final step. It would have been brilliant to have it include tracking of calls made, texts sent and data used in order to produce a few recommended contract or pay-as-you-go plans on the carriers it suggested. Instead, you’re just left at a carrier’s generic store page, where there’s still an almost overwhelming amount of choice.

Regardless, considering the app is free and requires no interaction, it’s hard to really knock it. You may as well run it on your phone, and see what carrier recommendations it produces – you may just find you get a recommendation that you didn’t expect.

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