Due to Afghan Wireless’ convenient pre-paid data roaming and international calling options, traveling abroad with your AWCC smartphone has never been easier. And today, there are more helpful apps than ever to ensure that your travels go as smoothly as possible. Here are six of the best travel apps to help you make the most of your next trip, whether it’s for business or pleasure.
-
Hotels.com
Hotels.com is one of the world’s leading online accommodations sites, reaching millions of travelers every day. You can be one of those millions with the Hotels.com app, which offers a choice of nearly 200,000 hotels in 200 countries. The app not only makes booking easy and convenient, but it also shows local deals based on your destination and lets you enter your preferences in order to personalize your search options. Hotels are displayed geographically on the app’s own map: a great feature to help you choose a hotel based on nearby sites of interest, proximity to transportation options, and desired neighborhoods.
-
Translator Speak & Translate
You’ll never again need to worry about traveling to a country where you don’t speak the local language. This handy translation app lets you turn your smartphone into your own personal, portable translator. The voice recognition capabilities of the app can automatically distinguish between 100 different languages and translate to and from English. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech features are both supported. If you’re not sure whether Internet access will be available at your destination, the app allows you to save important phrases ahead of time for offline access later. You can also use the app as a language coach to help improve your pronunciation and expand your vocabulary if you want to learn a few phrases in the local language.
-
FMap and Tracky GPS
These two apps are all about keeping tabs on where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re headed. FMap uses your phone’s GPS capabilities (or taps into an external GPS via Bluetooth) to chart your current position. You can then go back at any time to see your recent trips and to review your previous routes. FMap also makes it easy to post these travel details to your blog or social media accounts. Tracky GPS offers similar tracking services, with the added bonus of integrating with Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia to help point you toward shops, restaurants, or sites of interest along your intended route. Tracky GPS also allows your friends to track your journey on their own mobile devices or desktop computers, which can be a great feature to use as a safety precaution if your travels take you into remote territory, as on a wilderness or backcountry hiking trip, for example.
-
App2Find
While other location apps help you to figure out what services or attractions are nearby, App2Find goes one step further by helping you to figure out how far away you are from friends and family in your area. Billing itself as a “GPS friend tracker,” App2Find leverages augmented reality to let you pinpoint a friend’s location instantly without having to look at a map or search through the crowded public square where you were supposed to meet. Simply select the person you’re looking for on the app, hold up your smartphone, and the camera will tell you what direction the person is in and how far away they are.
-
Car Parker
Even when you’re in your own hometown, it can sometimes be tough to recall where you parked your car on a busy day. However, when you’re traveling in an unfamiliar city, trying to remember where you left a rental car that you can’t easily recognize can be a nearly impossible task. Car Parker helps to turn a disorienting experience into a straightforward one by using your smartphone’s GPS settings to record exactly where you parked your car. When parking, you can activate the app to capture your location, then add in any details like which level of the parking garage you are on. Later, you can use the provided map (or the alternative “compass mode”) to easily pinpoint where your car is in relation to your current location. Special bonus: the Car Parker app can even let you know when you’re running out of time on your parking meter.
-
Tripit
There are a lot of details to think about when planning and going on a trip: flights, accommodations, reservations, local transportation details, excursions, and more. Tripit helps you to bring all of this information together in one handy place, making it easy to organize and keep track of every step of your itinerary. You can simply forward all of your confirmation e-mails to the Tripit e-mail address, and the app will create a master itinerary for your entire trip, which you can easily share directly with friends and family or any other travel companions. You can also sync Tripit with your online calendar, so that all the details of your travel arrangements show up alongside your regularly scheduled activities.