iPhone users are a pampered lot, with almost unrestricted access to any digital resource cyberspace, at the expense of just a few taps. The adulation for this iconic device has resulted in countless apps for all conceivable needs. Whether it’s connecting across continents, gaming with a friend half a world away, or comparing airfares for an upcoming trip, there’s an app for everything.
Lets check out the most useful and popular iPhone apps:
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor travel app is a free and easy to use mobile app that helps you plan and have those perfect trips. It was one of the first websites to exploit user generated content, and today, with over 75 million authentic traveler reviews and opinions, its search function helps you find the best hotels, including Travelers’ Choice award winners; search for restaurants by cuisine, price range, and rating; discover great activities to indulge in; compare airfares and find the best deals; use Near Me Now to locate places in your vicinity; find answers to specific travel queries; and most importantly, add your own reviews and photos.
OffMaps
OffMaps is a paid travel app for your iPhone. As the name suggests, it enables you to download maps to your iPhone for offline use, so that once on the road, you can navigate comfortably without having to pay through the nose for international data usage. It includes two Guide credits for downloading city-specific travel listings and maps, but right now, has a limited number of International listings. And although this is a paid app, it’s still good value for money: all those international data usage charges that you don’t have to pay means OffMaps more than pays for itself in under 24 hours. Price: $1.99
Photosynth
This is a fantastic free fotography app for your iPhone. Photosynth Interactive Panorama Capture and Sharing makes the best of your iPhone camera by stitching together your photos to create panoramic images. This amazing app enables you to create professional looking 360-degree views that you can really impress your friends and family with.
Instagram is a free photo editing app for your iPhone. Working much like Photoshop, it helps you convert your photographs into works of art. Instagram has a number of filtered effects such as “1977″ and “Nashville” that give your pictures that professional, antiquated, or artistic look, or that remarkable tilt-shift blur effect. And what’s more, you can easily share photos across social media networks.
Postagrams
This is a highly innovative, free picture postcard app for your iPhone. Postagram enables you to click photos on your iPhone, and then customize, print and send your very own postcards to your friends and family anywhere in the world. Postagram postcards are printed on thick, glossy photo postcards at 300dpi resolution, and personalized with the profile photo of the sender. You can also include an optional 180 character text message. These cards are delivered anywhere in the US for 99c, and $1.99 for addresses in other countries (price includes postage).
FlightAware
FlightAware is a simple, free no-frills app for your iPhone that helps you track your flight information. All you need to do is to enter the airline and flight number and FlightAware does the rest. Moreover, the push notification feature gets you updates on flight delays, gate changes or cancellations.
Urbanspoon
Urbanspoon is a free locator app for your iPhone. Using GPS, it scans your location and helps you find restaurants, bars and other establishments in your vicinity. You can search by type, price and rating. Full services are available in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, but Urbanspoon provides information about several other cities as well. Name sounds good, too!.
The North Face – Trailhead
If you fancy the outdoors, then North Face’s Trailhead is the ideal iPhone app to guide you in all your outdoor activities. Trailhead uses another app, EveryTrail.com to pinpoint your location, and then maps out all the hiking trails and bike routes in the area. Trailhead’s GPS has the capability to identify nearby outdoor events, track your speed, route, distance and elevation, and, of course, find the closest North Face store around. An associated app from North Face, Weather is a new and free app that tracks weather conditions for your next snow-bound vacation. It’s a great tool to understand what you might be getting to before you actually hit the slopes. Weather provides full trail maps, avalanche advisory, international resort information and even an option to allow for push notifications when your favorite resort gets snow.
EveryTrail
EveryTrail is a versatile traveler’s app, designed to complement the iPhone. This GPS based app guides you on an easy-to-read map as you walk, providing street names, a compass, audio guides, points of interest, and details of your average speed, elevation and duration. This is a fairly popular app, and over 400,000 travelers all over the world use it to track their journeys and excursions and to share information such as any special places worth visiting.
Rough Guide Trip Lens
Rough Guide Trip Lens is a free, innovative app for your iPhone that enables you to transform a collection of individual travel photos and text into a “creative narrative of travel adventures.” The app uses GPS to pinpoint your location as you travel, and record your journey as it unfolds. You can post photos and text from anywhere in the world, and see your travels unfold on a map at each destination. No connectivity is not a problem: your pictures and post are uploaded immediately when you enter a connected are. You can also share locations and photos via Facebook and Twitter, or link to a central website that compiles all the photos from the journey into a personalized blog for friends and family to see. And you can also see what other travelers are doing, and even join their conversations.
If anything, iPhone owners suffer from a syndrome of too much. As it is, their phones are fully loaded. And with several hundred thousand enticing apps floating out there in cyberspace, identifying the best ones must be a daunting task, indeed. Not any more, we hope; not after we’ve selected and given you the best 10. Go ahead, take your pick. And happy traveling!
