There’s thousands of excellent travel apps available for Android-toting folks on the move, and we’ve tried out an awful lot of them. Here’s five of our current favourites:
OS Atlas (free/£1.99 premium edition)
This handy navigation app serves up access to UK Ordnance Survey Maps at four handy resolutions – 1:125000 (roadmap), 1:50000 (Landranger), 1:25000 (Explorer) and 1:10000 (Streetmap).
Perfect for rambling, the smooth scrolling app supports paths and waypoints, comes with an onscreen compass, and lets you search by postcode, placename, grid ref or latitude/longitude.
London A-Z Atlas (£5.99)
Google Maps may be great for looking up London streets but it’s a fat lot of good when you’re stuck deep down on the Northern Line – and here’s where the London A-Z Mini Atlas pays itself off.
This digital version of the popular A-Z atlas starts up in 5 seconds and covers an area from West Hendon in North West to Grove Park in South East. The program automatically installs to SD (Froyo 2.2 and above) and also offers GPS location and tracking.
Displaying upcoming bus departure times from 370,000 stops in the UK, this is an app that can take the stress out of waiting at a remote bus stop.
Bus bound users can search for bus stops at their current location or by name or postcode, with the app providing a countdown until the next bus is due (where real time information is available -otherwise you get the scheduled bus times).
ViewRanger GPS (free trial, 61p, some maps extra)
This fully featured app turns Android handsets into a versatile outdoors navigation tool, letting users plan, plot, navigate, track, locate, record, analyse & share your meanderings.
ViewRanger lets you buy and download Ordance Survey maps as well as access web maps like OpenStreetMap, OpenCycleMap & OpenPisteMap, Bing Road Maps and Bing Aerial Imagery.
With maps stored on a user’s device, there’s no need for a web connection – and it’s also possible to downloaded fresh maps on the move too.
My Tracks (free)
Created by Google staff in their “20% time,” My Tracks lets you record and share your GPS tracks, including statistics.
It’s a superbly slick and handy tool for outdoor activities like running, biking and hiking – or just seeing how you managed to stagger back from the pub.
While you’re out and about, the GPS-powered app scoops up useful statistics such as time, speed, distance, and elevation about your perambulations, which can be stored and shared via GPX, TCX, KML, or CSV files, Google Maps, Google Docs or via Twitter and Facebook.
London A-Z app is already out of date as it is still showing the extended Congestion Zone.
The ‘Catch That Bus’ app is not all that accurate when it’s giving real-time information, in my experience. It’s certainly useful, not least because at least it gives you an idea of how frequently a service is actually running, but don’t expect the buses to show up exactly when – or in the order – it says they will.