Location technology firm Glympse on Tuesday announced that it’s launching the first location sharing television app ever created, adding that the tool will be available exclusively for the Samsung Smart TV ecosystem. Like many of the company’s previous offerings, the new Glympse app for Samsung’s Tizen-powered TVs was designed as a simple, intuitive solution for location sharing, allowing users to ping the coordinates of their family members and friends, as well as supported delivery and repair services, the Seattle, Washington-based company said. The app is available for download on compatible devices directly from the Samsung TV app store as of today.
The new Glympse app for Samsung-made television sets revolves around Glympse Groups, a digital list of devices that users populate with smartphones of their family members and anyone else willing to share their location with them. Adding a cell phone to a Glympse Group is accomplished by inputting its mobile number in the Glympse Samsung TV app, after which the submitted device will receive an SMS containing an automatically generated link. Following that link will add the phone to the user’s Glympse Group, which consequently allows pinging its location. The company’s new service for Samsung TVs was designed as part of the existing Glympse ecosystem, meaning that handsets added to a Glympse Group from a TV will also be trackable on other compatible devices.
The launch of the first location sharing TV app is yet another result of Samsung and Glympse’s partnership that brought the services created by the Washington company to a wide variety of devices manufactured by the South Korean tech giant. In the last 12 months, Glympse expanded its offerings to the Gear S2, Gear S3, Galaxy S7, and the Galaxy S7 Edge, and the firm just released another app for the Family Hub refrigerator that Samsung is now preinstalling on its latest Internet-enabled fridge. Apart from smartphones, Glympse’s platform also supports connected cars and will likely continue expanding its reach to other Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the future. Glympse’s partnership with Samsung also isn’t one-sided as it allows the Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer to provide even more convenient services to its customers, and both companies confirmed that they’re eager to continue their collaboration for the foreseeable future.