Description:

Essential iPhone Travel Apps

Best Navigation App: Google Maps

Google Maps is the best straight forward navigation app out there for pure directions. Its preinstalled on your iPhone and is probably one of the main reasons why the iPhone is so handy. Lucky for us that means its a free app. Apple currently does not allow true turn by turn navigation yet, but this is the closest solution to your navigation needs. Most location based apps for the iPhone utilize this app for location displays anyway. It follows your position in real time, has an itinerary style directions list, and is fully searchable. It also has pedestrian mode, public transportation mode, and satellite views (which can be helpful with landmarks). One tidbit is that in the past I have found that when searching for small businesses as a destination, the address listed seems that it is what the company is registered under not necessarily the actual location. Confirming with a regular google search has become a regular practice lately.

Best Cheap Fuel/Gas Finder: Cheap Gas!

Cheap Gas! is a useful app that is powered by the popular gasbuddy.com.  It is location based and finds the cheapest fuel costs closest to your current location by default.  This app can also be configured to find the closest gas station to your current location, or even by zip code.  When you click on an station after it finds your location, it shows you the price of each grade of gas.  It also lets you find it on the ever essential Google Maps app.  GPS sensitivity, Distance criteria and filtering can also be adjusted.  Since gasbuddy is a very popular and reputable site generated from over 180 sources, you can feel assured that the data is pretty accurate.  Given the constant fluctuations of fuel costs, this app can save you money each time you fill up.

Best Hotel Finder: Hotels.com

The Hotels.com app can be a very useful app.  Though the Hotels.com website when viewed in safari is just as good, this one works better when you are actually near your destination.  The use of location makes it easier to find relevant results.   The app is simply a portal to the actual website, but luckily the website is decent so the end product is actually useful.  The design of the app itself is pretty beat.  Search options are geared toward location only and the splash screen is awful.  But once again for quick snapshot of location based hotels its decent.  Each entry has a customer rating, distance from location, base pricing, pictures, description, amenities, etc.  There is a lot of room for improvement here, but if your looking for location based lodging with a familiar interface, this is a useful research tool.  When your on the road this app can help you pick a hotel by quickly giving you the stats of the places near you.

Best Taxi Finder: Taxi!

Taxi! is a great app for finding pure taxi services based on your current location.  The results are apparently prescreened before they even make it into the app.  The app also lets you know what forms of payment they accept which can be very useful if you spent all your cash at the bar that night.  It also conveniently groups the results by near by regions instead of just a straight list.  There are also customer reviews of the taxi companies.  This app is clean and fast.  For other transport like limos, read my review of the best all around travel app on this page.

Best Airline Flight Tracker: Flight Update

Flight Update is one of the coolest flight apps out there.  If you fly frequently this app is an essential.  It gives you time info, progress tracking, gate info, and anything you could ever need while flying.   The evaluation of actual times can be a little quirky but looking at the details will give you the actual information.  It has been known to represent something as being on time while the detail has the actual delays.  Also the real-time aspect of updating flight status could be more consistent.  Most of the time is accurate but sometimes there is a delay for when a change is posted.  All in all this is a very useful app.  The itinerary functions are very helpful for multi-leg trips and the alternative options help you if you need to find similar flights in a pinch.  Flight Update seems like something that would be a great tool for airline employees too.  Its not free but it won’t break the bank either.

Best Food Finder: Urbanspoon & LocalEats

LocalEats

Urbanspoon

First off let me start by saying these apps are designed for most major areas.  If your looking for help in a small town these apps may prove to be useless.  Now with that out of the way, these apps are pretty cool.  Not only are they useful for places you may be visiting, they can also show you places you did not even know existed right were you live or play.  First up, Urbanspoon.  Urbanspoon features this slot machine type interface.  It starts by finding your general location, and then the wheels let you choose food type and price range.  At any point you can lock the choices you want to stay constant, then shake the phone or press the shake button to randomly choose a place based on what you selected.  Aside from this unique interface, the basic searches are all still available.  Criteria such as, neighborhood, types of food, delivery options, and top rated help you find something to eat.  You will easily find reviews, contact numbers, and directions via the ever essential google maps.  Next up LocalEats.  LocalEats is not as fancy as Urbanspoon, but its very clean and easy to use.  This app focuses on the best 100 restaurants in the 50 largest US cities, so do not let the around me feature mislead you.  Now not to be confused, this can and does include those classic mom and pop type places if they are indeed worth the effort.  If you are really looking to explore all the options of a major city, this may not be for you.  If you want an abridged version of the area, this is a great tool.  My one gripe is that the reviews are very commercial.  You do not really get that real person feel from them.  Check out the review I do for the best all around app for travel, it overlaps with this category and may also prove to be helpful.

Best Location Based Info Apps: AroundMe & Yelp

AroundMe

Yelp

Both of these apps overlap heavily with the food finder category and the transportation category.  The transportation aspect of these info apps includes things like limos and other services that a taxi finder may not list.  Both of these apps are content rich and uber useful for many general purpose uses.  AroundMe is a lightning fast, well organized app.  It launches into a well thought out category page.  From there it simply just lists in order of distance the nearest type of business you are looking for.  AroundMe is very easy to navigate and there is no required typing.  If you do wish, they do have a manual entry search area, but it is certainly not needed often.  You also can change it from current location based to search location based.  Now here are the downsides to AroundMe, there are no user generated items here.  No reviews, no photos, just a straight listing.  The clean design is worth it and definitely worth the download.  Now onto Yelp, which I honestly think is a must have application.  Yelp does all that AroundMe can do plus a lot more.  You can drill down the many categories into really specific sub categories.  The amount of content is amazing and very relevant.  The major upside to this app is the user content.  Reviews and user uploaded images really make this app a homerun.  A neat feature is the ability to narrow the search area to literally the number of blocks etc.  This app is a no brainer and should be on everyone’s iPhone.