When it comes the time to leave the house and meet people in the city, go to a new place or do a quick check of the public transport, we often feel that the navigation apps with GPS we have are not enough. We require different apps to meet our friends, to drive or to book a table so we should instead focus on the very best for every situation. Each in its style, there are apps that will make our life easier and with which we can really solve most of our communication problems at any time. Check out our list with some of the best ones:
To move around the city
All urbanites, who have breathed the polluted air of the city since they were little and consider that walking fast and combining transport is part of their daily routine, had to suffer the use of separate apps for each mode of transport. The Metro app, the tram app, the bus app… Now there are several good apps that cross all the updated data of public transport and pedestrian ways to identify the best route to go anywhere. Among them, one of our favorites is Moovit, an app that works in 1500 big cities of the world and provides a reliable transport relation in which you will save several minutes to the day. It is simple to use, just activate the GPS of your smartphone and indicate which direction you want to go and the app will give you all the options available at different times.
Moovit’s notification system will alert you when there are transportation interruptions, delays or strikes in real time to avoid unnecessary surprises. One of the things we like most about Moovit is that it also takes into account the opinion of a good part of its 70 million users around the world to update their databases and include incidents, strikes and other useful information. Get it for free on Android and iOS.
To meet your friends in the city
For those who enjoy going out to have a beer with friends, try a new restaurant or just make a plan, Wave Application is the best app to share live locations with others privately. It is very simple to use: open a session with one or more people and send them a request to share the location temporally. When they accept the request a dynamic map is opened in which you can see each other moving as you do in real life. Then, you can take directions to reach the meeting point you have set on the map.
It is an app made for everyday life, where friends move from bar to bar, when some of them are late or when the crowd makes it difficult to find friends without the help of a GPS in real time. It also has a chat to close the details. Once arrived, it’s time to forget about new technologies for a while and just enjoy the company. Wave has millions of users in more than 150 countries. Get it for free on iOS or Android.
To drive without jamming, road works or poor road conditions
Many of us used to listen to the radio before going to work or watch for news about roadworks or events such as cleaning the asphalt. Nowadays, navigating while driving offers us alternative ways for every situation and save us time to do better things rather than staying at a traffic jam. Among several apps, the top one is Waze, an app acquired recently by Google that has already hundreds of millions users. Waze uses official cartography and data from private companies to ensure the best driving route at any time, but also monitors anonymously your own GPS to identify the speed and stops you do to update their suggestions of route both for your and for other drivers.
Taking into account the enormous popularity of this app, the information of the users is the key with which Waze has become the indispensable app to drive in half world. As a user you also have the option to report accidents like animals found on the road, garbage or problems of some kind. With the latest update, the app also proposes the Travel Drives function in which to find the best hours to travel for those who are planning the return of the holidays. Get it for free on iOS or Android.
Find the best bike routes even in the city
Cycling through a city can be quite an odyssey, often the parks are full and the jumble of cars can be a reason to give up our plans to exercise. That is why we find so interesting Cyclemap, an app that calculates the best routes near where we are to go biking, according to the user’s ratings, the forecast, the road conditions, the altitude and the length of the road.
In addition to planning the route, Cyclemap is an app consecrated among cyclists, as it provides varied information on our performance on the bike, thanks to the use of our GPS while we ride. For those who do not have a bike and take a free one in the city, the app will give them information about upcoming bike stations, its availability, and also gas stations to wash or inflate the wheels, rest areas or even viewpoints to see the amazing views of every route. Despite its recent departure on Google Play and iTunes, Cyclemap has already thousands of downloads and routes that are completing day by day. There are no longer excuses for not going biking. Get it now for free on iOS and Android.
For when you are as hungry as a wolf
An indispensable part of our social life is focused on food. With so many new options, new restaurants or trendy places, finding a good one in rankings listings is sometimes a tedious task if we then have to look where they are. The simplest way to solve a night out is an app that recommends us places directly near us, sorted by type of food, price and ratings from other users. And if to this recipe we add an app that is already established in hundreds of cities of the world and that has 40000 restaurants, then we have the app with perfect GPS to go out to eat.
Open Table operates in the largest cities in the world and already has 700 millions users, or 700 millions meals we could say, that will help us choose the best option for dinner, either in the city or on vacation. Its maps are not perfect for navigating throughout the city as a pedestrian, but clearly indicate where the main restaurants are located. From the same app we can book a table and have discounts for being users of OpenTable, a prize for being one of the largest communities in the world in restaurant reservations. Get it for free on iOS and Android.
Pablo Clemente Pérez 