Life-Changing Travel Apps

Have smartphone, will travel. Once you are used to the convenience of having the world at your fingertips, it’s hard to think of going away without your phone. Talk to your phone provider before you leave about the most economical way to make use of your phone while you are overseas, so you don’t come home to an unexpected bill. Remember to also back up your devices before you leave and add some good travel specific apps to help make your trip fun and convenient.

Here is a list of some to consider. Like all good apps, they answer questions you never knew you had!

Packing Pro

How often have you arrived at your designation, minus a crucial piece of clothing or equipment, or have overpacked horrendously? Tell this little baby where you’re going, how long for and with whom and it’ll spit out a suggested list of what you might need, split up into essentials (passport, currency), clothes, gadgets and more, with separate lists for additional family members. Genius

Tipulator

Every country has different customs when it comes to tipping and getting it wrong can cause enormous offence. Thankfully, this nifty tip calculator will help you avoid embarrassment and mind-twisting maths after a couple of the local beverages!

Onavo

It’s hard to low how this works, but it does. Once installed, this app considerably reduces the amount of data required to perform everyday tasks, such as retrieving email and posting to Facebook. Your roaming bill will thank you.

TravelSafe Pro

In an emergency, your mind may go blank when it comes to important numbers. This is a potentially life-saving database of emergency service numbers for just about every country you’d ever care to visit. There’s also embassy details should passports go missing and the option to pin certain services to your home screen as widgets, for one-touch access to police, ambulances and fire engines. Your travel insurance advisor  may be able to suggest extra entries too.

WorldMate

This is like taking a personal assistant away with you. Simply forward your various confirmation emails for flights/hotels/hire cars/restaurant bookings etc. to trips@worldmate.com and the app instantly generates an itemised itinerary covering your entire trip. The premium version will keep you in the loop in real time, generating alerts to let you know when flights are delayed or gates change.

Waze

Never be lost or delayed again. Tap in your destination (or use the speech recognition) and user-submitted traffic reports make sure you’re offered the quickest route for the current road conditions.

HopStop

Public transport information covering 68 (and counting) of the world’s biggest, busiest metropolitan centres. You’ll never be more than a few taps away from a neatly displayed, stop-by-stop itinerary.

Google Goggles

Does the building you are looking at seem familiar, but you can’t place it? If there are no locals on hand to ask, direct your phone’s camera lens at it and as long as what you’re pointing at is famous enough – it’ll return relevant Wikipedia articles filling you in with everything you need to know.

HearPlanet

Using a hard copy or a digital guidebook can mean that you wander around amazing places looking down. This cunning app solves the problem by reading the information (farmed from Wikipedia and its own database) directly into your ears. It’s a bit like one of those audio guides they hand out at museums.

Trip Journal

This is more than just a virtual travel scrapbook – as long as you’ve got your GPS switched on, it’ll also create maps of your various explorations, geo-tagged with pictures, videos and notes. You’ll never feel bad about not organising your travel snaps into an album again!