Make Your Phone Your Best Travel Buddy
Whether you’re planning a weekend getaway or a long holiday, you would usually pick a spot that you are yet to explore. And if you have your Android device with you, you can pretty much enjoy your time without getting lost or requiring local assistance.
TRAVEL MATES
The frst thing you need is an app that can help you plan your vacation and help you make the required bookings. If you are looking at taking your family along for the trip, it is always sensible to plan your bookings well in advance. Two popular travel portals, Trip Advisor and Cleartrip, have apps for Android. You can book and cancel train/flight tickets, make enquiries on your PNR enquiries, and book hotels too. If you are traveling to a new place, being able to navigate the area is essential. There are several applications that can come to your rescue. One such application is Zomato. You can browse for as many as 11,000 restaurants across six cities in India, including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune and Chennai. Addition-ally, your Android devices come loaded with Google Maps and Google Latitude for point to point navigation.
LISTS
When you are all excited about a trip, there is a chance that you may skip some details or forget to pack an essential item. There are many apps that help you organise your trip more ef? ciently. The free Packing List app comes with pre-created lists depending on the kind of trip you’re about to take. If that isn’t good enough, you can generate your own to add up all the things to need to carry. If you need something more comprehensive, you can opt for the Vacation Planner, which is priced at Rs 45. Another checklist of considerable importance, especially if you are taking kids or the elderly along is a ? rst aid list. You can purchase the very useful First Aid Checklist app priced at Rs 44.97. The list consists of over 140 ? rst aid items that you could need when you are traveling. You can also add and edit entries as per your requirements. You will also ?nd a trekking and baby planner from the same developer at the same price.
TRAVELOGUES
Most people enjoy keeping a detailed travelogue to keep a track of all their holiday escapades and like sharing them with their loved ones. If you are looking for a detailed travel journal app, then the free backTrack Personal Travel Log is a good option to use. It’s convenient because it records your journey automatically allowing you to enjoy your holiday.
You can browse though the entries in your free time in a list or detailed map view. You can also map the app to your calendar to make chronological entries.If you love taking lots of pictures, then you can a pick a tool to sync your photographs to be uploaded to your PicasaWeb account online.
One such tool is the Picasa Tool Pro. It can help you clear space on your memory card and back up your pictures online too. If you enjoy blogging, you can use the WordPress for Android app. You can post blog entries with pictures of? ine, and publish them online when you have Web access. You can also keep a track of post comments and site stats. You can manage multiple blogs that are linked to a single account.
TOOLS
If there is one thing that you should not be caught without while camping or on a trek, it’s a Swiss army knife. Similarly, there are some tools that can come to your rescue when you least expect it. The most essential app you need whether you are travelling or not is the free Where’s My Droid app. The app makes your phone ring when a text message with a predetermined keyword is sent to it even if it is in silent mode. There are also several Android apps that help you prolong your phone’s battery life. One such app is the Ultimate Juice , which is priced at Rs 180.
If directions can cause confusion, you need a good compass tool too. You can get the augmented reality 3D compass app 3D Compass Pro priced Rs 90. It also has a free version called 3D Compass that you can try before you buy. Another must-have app when you’re travelling to a new place is the free TeslaLED Flashlight. It uses the ? ash of your camera as a handy makeshift torch.
If travelling to a new place makes you feel linguistically inadequate, a good translation tool that helps you with pronunciations will come in handy. You can opt for Google Translate app, which works with more than 50 languages. It not only supports text-to-speech and voice inputs, but also doubles up as a dictionary.
BOOKS
If you have your luggage all stacked to match the permissible weight limit, and you like reading when you travel, making place for bulky books can get tiresome. Instead, you can look for apps like Aldiko Book Reader or the Kindle for Android, which provides you with an e-book reader and enables you to download free and paid e-books, and even newspapers (with the Kindle) to your Android device. While both apps are free of cost, you can opt for the premium version of the Aldiko Book Reader, priced at Rs 136. While you can read ePub and PDF formats, the Micro-soft Reader-speci? c LIT ? les may not work on these readers.
