A smartphone in the hands of a modern traveler is not only a means of communication. Now you can easily reserve a hotel, find sights, and navigate the area without any additional devices.
Also, you have the opportunity to find car rental under 21 anywhere in the world. This is a convenient transport that allows you to feel freedom and independence on the trip, and it’s accessible to young travelers.
In addition, there are many other applications for your smartphone. Let’s choose some services that will simplify your life when you have already reached your travel destination.
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me
A huge base of maps is useful for getting around the city, and for long-distance car trips the application can be used as a navigator. Most importantly, Maps.me works offline. You just need to download a map of the area of interest to you in advance. And then – fill into the search form the name of the street, hotel, bar or store and move along the created route. On the maps even ATMs are marked.
You can use automatic tooltips and search by category. Places can be bookmarked, mailed to friends and grouped into folders Maps take up a bit of memory, while working very fast and can rotate depending on the direction of your movement.
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Foursquare
This is a service for finding cafes, bars, restaurants, hotels, shops and sights in any city in the world. The Foursquare feature is that it remembers the spots you visited, and finds out your preferences.
For this, during registration, you can immediately identify areas of your interests, for example: “cocktails”, “nightlife”, “lounge” and even “for single” or “comfortable sofas”. Based on the information gathered, Foursquare will show you the establishments you are likely to enjoy too.
You can independently find the object of interest, for example, by the tags “breakfast” and “cafe”. All the necessary information is collected about each place: opening hours, price category and contacts for booking, as well as reviews and visitors’ ratings.
According to the creators, more than 75 million reviews from locals and travelers are available in the database. Some users, for example, leave a password for Wi-Fi or report which particular dish is best in this restaurant.
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TripAdvisor
The largest recommendation service contains over 200 million traveler reviews. A thoughtful interface helps not to get lost in all this diversity. Enter the city you are interested in and switch between the main sections: guides, attractions, hotels, restaurants, etc.
The rating of each place is conveniently estimated according to different parameters. For hotels it will be “location”, “cleanliness”, “service”; for bars – “food” and “atmosphere”. The guides are also divided into numerous categories: three-day tours, shopping tours, family trips.
Every year the site publishes ratings of the best destinations, hotels and restaurants around the world. The desire to get into the treasured lists of TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice makes thousands of establishments around the world go wild to please the client.
You can also search for airline tickets and accommodation through the service.
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Uber
When traveling without mobile connection, it can be difficult to call a taxi. By using the Uber service, you can book a trip by simply connecting to the Internet in 59 countries around the world.
The application itself will determine your GPS location (you may not even know the exact address), show tariffs in a specific city and call you the nearest car. After the trip is completed, payment is withdrawn from the bank or PayPal account, so during registration Uber will ask you to enter a credit card number.
So that the cost of the trip doesn’t come as a surprise to you, indicate the starting and ending points of the trip and find out the approximate amount. If you are traveling with a company of friends, a running account is easily divided between your Uber friends’ accounts.
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Google Translate
The well-known translation service from 90 languages of the world can be used without connecting to the Internet. It’s enough to download in advance on your smartphone the language pack of the country to which you are going.
On the road, the application is also convenient because you don’t have to waste time typing words with your hands – for many languages, the camera translation function works. Take a picture of the text or just point the phone’s camera at it and read the instant translation.
With a mobile translator, you can even at least communicate with the locals: click on the microphone icon and ask the person to repeat the phrase in order to hear its translation.
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Wi-Fi Map
While many companies developing services for travelers try to create convenient, compact and fast offline databases for their mobile applications, the issue of fast and cheap Internet access on the go remains an urgent issue.
In order to find numerous secret placed in your travel destination, pre-install Wi-Fi Map on your smartphone. In an unfamiliar city, it will determine your GPS location and show the nearest Wi-Fi spots with passwords, if required. Copy the password and connect to the point through the usual phone settings.