10 iPhone, Android Apps For Your Summer Travels
Prime vacation season is right around the corner. Use these 10 mobile apps to plan your trip, prepare for departure, and navigate new places with less hassle.
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Memorial Day Weekend, otherwise known as the unofficial start to summer, is only a couple of weeks away.
While travel isn't limited to summer months, the weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day are prime time for getting away from work to relax and explore. If you haven't already booked a summer vacation, chances are good you're thinking about it.
Some people crave vacation to take a "digital detox" and go off the grid for a few days. Professionals who spend most of their time in front of a screen, like those in IT, may feel the need to disconnect even more than others.
[Read: 8 iOS Apps to Jazz up Your Presentations.]
While it's understandable you'll want some downtime at some point, it's also worth noting technology can make a tremendous difference in researching, booking, preparing for, and experiencing your summer vacation.
Mobile apps in particular are very handy when it comes to travel. In my experiences traveling South America over the last two months, I can safely say I would be less organized, less informed, and a lot more lost without the apps I've downloaded on my smartphone.
You may not bring your laptop on your upcoming vacation, but you'll probably pack your smartphone the next time you hit the road. These are some favorite travel apps from my fellow Remote Year travelers, some new apps on the App Store, and some I've relied on to help me get around new places.
Which travel apps do you rely on? Are there any that didn't make this list? We'd like to keep adding to the collection.
(All images from Apple App Store unless otherwise noted.)
This app is a go-to for many travelers who enjoy adventuring abroad and the most helpful I've found in navigating foreign countries. While you can use Google Translate to build your language skills in the long term, it's really most helpful for translation in everyday life. You can type words and phrases directly into the app for a quick translation, or hold your camera up to a sign or menu to instantly translate a lot of content at once. It also supports instant speech translation. A handwriting feature lets you draw characters to translate instead of using the keyboard to type everything out.
Google Translate supports 103 languages for typing translation and 52 languages offline when you download the translation file.
If you're looking to give your smartphone camera a boost before your next getaway, check out Pro HDR X. The app analyzes each scene in real-time and uses three full-resolution exposures to generate HDR, resulting in maximum range with minimal noise. The result is an HDR effect that improves image quality much more than the HDR software built into the iPhone.
Other features include rear and front camera support, live-updating sliders to control your HDR before you shoot, filters, captions, geotags, and photo library support for editing single images and merging HDRs from two or three bracketed images.
Pro HDR X costs $1.99 and is available on iOS. A similar app called Pro HDR Camera is available for $1.99 on Android.
GateGuru is a valuable resource for travelers who spend much of their time in the air. The app is designed to take the stress out of air travel by providing information you'll need before and after your flight.
After downloading, you get started by sending your itinerary to GateGuru. The app analyzes your travel plans and provides your check-in airport terminal, the terminal and gate numbers for arrivals and departures, the estimated TSA security wait times, the airports' weather, and your flight status -- all via push notifications for scheduling changes.
In case you're arriving or departing from an unfamiliar airport, GateGuru provides airport maps and tips. It also has amenity information, complete with ratings and reviews for restaurants, shops, and services.
Seeing new places is fun. Long trips on a plane, bus, train, or car are not much fun. Pocket Cast is a podcast manager that gives you access to a variety of great content no matter where you are.
Through Pocket Cast, you can discover new content from trending and featured content, or through different networks. You can filter content, instantly refresh your collection, toggle between video and audio, set how many episodes of a podcast you want to keep, and customize a list of what podcasts will be downloaded in the background. If you're a fan of a specific podcast, you can opt to receive a notification when new episodes are released.
Pocket Cast is available for $3.99 on iOS and Android. For the price, you avoid ads, episode limits, feature bloat, or trial periods.
If you're in an unfamiliar place and looking for recommendations on where to go and what to see, try downloading LiveTrekker. The app helps you discover trips submitted by the community and lets you submit adventures you would like to recommend to others.
Part of the appeal of LiveTrekker is the option to record and share your journeys. The app records where you go as you travel. You can capture the places and events around you to illustrate that walk you took through a new city, along the waterfront, or through the park. After you record a trip, you can search through your recordings by entering a keyword, a time, or a GPS location.
You may already be a frequent visitor to Kayak's website, but its mobile app is handy for browsing and booking cheap flights, hotels, and rental cars. Kayak browses a broad range of travel sites and aggregates the least expensive options into a list.
The Trips feature helps you organize travel plans and stay updated on the status of your flight. In the latest version of the app, a new Save button lets you add preferred flights, hotels, and rental cars to a trip you've booked on the site.
If you're overwhelmed by the number of travel apps on your phone, Vurb might be able to help you out. The app compiles and presents information from different apps into one spot for you to access information on restaurants, events, movies, or TV shows.
You can use Vurb to find things to do and read through ideas from people who submit recommendations to the app. Vurb lets you save favorite ideas, such as a restaurant you want to try, or place you want to travel. The app presents ratings and reviews from different apps like Yelp, Foursquare, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes.
When you decide on a plan, you can use Vurb to access all your usual travel apps for booking. Reserve tickets using Fandango, rides with Uber, and restaurant reservations with OpenTable.
If you're traveling to a different part of the globe, you'll need a conversion app to figure out how to convert your home values to the local currency, weights, distances, and other metrics.
Converter Plus can be used to convert multiple currencies and units at the same time. It supports compound units like "pounds + ounces" and "feet + inches." You can search for specific categories and units, figure out totals with the built-in calculator, and edit existing templates or add your own.
The app is also kept up-to-date. Exchange rates for all 167 world currencies are refreshed every 6 hours or upon request.
Converter Plus is free to download on iOS. A similar tool called Unit Converter Pro Plus is available on Android.
The concept behind TripSee caters to anyone who prefers a step-by-step itinerary over spontaneous travel. It's understandable you might feel overwhelmed when traveling to an entirely new place, so TripSee helps you pinpoint popular places to visit.
Instead of scouring travel websites and blogs to figure out where to go, you plug your country into TripSee. The app generates a list of points of interest, which you can add to your trip itinerary and view as markers on a map of your destination.
You can use TripSee to create an itemized itinerary with dates, times, costs, and notes for each location. It also contains location reviews, pictures, descriptions, phone numbers, and addresses to help with planning your travels. The app's cloud storage lets you create and store hundreds of trips so you can keep track of the places you've visited.
Hotel Tonight is the app you need if you're hunting for a last-minute hotel room. Whether you're looking for a spontaneous weekend away or want to extend your vacation for a day or two, Hotel Tonight will help you find lodging at a low cost.
How it works: Hotels give Hotel Tonight last-minute discounts on rooms they haven't booked for the night. Rooms are posted on the app, and there you can book accommodations in a few minutes or less. All hotels are pre-screens and organized into categories (Basic, Hip, Luxe) so it's easy to find one that suits your taste and budget.
Hotel Tonight is the app you need if you're hunting for a last-minute hotel room. Whether you're looking for a spontaneous weekend away or want to extend your vacation for a day or two, Hotel Tonight will help you find lodging at a low cost.
How it works: Hotels give Hotel Tonight last-minute discounts on rooms they haven't booked for the night. Rooms are posted on the app, and there you can book accommodations in a few minutes or less. All hotels are pre-screens and organized into categories (Basic, Hip, Luxe) so it's easy to find one that suits your taste and budget.
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