Android Navigation Apps

Waze Navigation Android App Review

Description:

Navigation apps are a great way to find things in your local area and to get from point A to point B with turn by turn directions.  While these apps are great, there are many factors that can change how people get around.  some of these factors are road closures, accidents, and high traffic.  Without knowing these variables, the phone might tell you that the travel time will only be a few minutes, but in reality it could take almost an hour to get to where you want.  Well there are apps out there that give you live current info, and one such app is called Waze navigation for the android phone.

How does this app have access to current road conditions?  Well the app uses wazers to help.  A wazer is a person that has this app on their phone and reports on a road’s current condition.  This is great because if you live in a city with a lot of wazers, you will have a very accurate depiction of the road.  Depending on what wazers say, the app will look at all the notifications posted, and help you to re-route to get the shortest route to your destination.

w

Features:

• This is a very ingenious app as it uses users to help give real time accureat info
• the crowd sources real time mapping components
• this app is better for daily driving which makes it very interesting and fun with games and social components as well that you can take full advantage of
• The only downside to this app is that it is worthless is more rural areas where there are not many people connected to the app.
• The app uses GPS and navigation technology to help you route your travle
• the experience of this app will depend on the saturation of the area you live in with the social component of this app.

If you drive daily in a large city, this app can help save you a lot of time as it relies on real people to update the status on roads so that you get real time up to date information.  This app is really on to something to be able to report traffic, accidents, speed traps, temporary road closures, or contruction reroutes to help you save time in reaching the place you are trying to get to.

Conclusion:

This app is free for the android and has been given a 3 out of 5 star rating by other users.

DriveSafe.ly Android App Review

Description:

All of us that drive often need to use your phones while driving to check e-mail and text messages.  Well this can be very dangerous and is illegal to do in many states across the U.S.  If you want a safer solution to be able to check your e-mail and text messages while driving, the app called DriveSafe.ly is a great app to help you do this.  DriveSafe.ly for the android is a one stop shop solution that makes it so you don’t even have to touch the phone while driving.

This app reads your text messages and emails out loud so you don’t have to look at your phone.  If you have your phone paired up to your car via bluetooth, you can actually hear these messages read out loud through the audio system in your car.  If you don’t have the ability to pair, you can just listen to the phone read it through the speakers on the phone.  While the app can read text messages, it has to be set up initially to be able to read email messages, which is an important thing to remember if you download this app.

Features:

• Listen to text messages, emails and screen caller ID while the app reads them aloud to you so you can focus on driving.
• Auto-respond to the person who text messaged or email you with a pre-generated response
• Audible feedback quality is clear and sounds conversational and not super robotic
• much safer to use when driving to be able to receive text and email messages
• Email integration must be set up
• very innovative way to listen to your sms text messages, emails and even screen your caller id without using your hands

This app is a great solution to help people stay safer, and i have to tell you that the automatic reader is one of the best we have heard.  Its sounds very conversational and not so robotic like most automatic readers.  The voice even understands acronyms like LOL and BRB so that it can read your conversations and text messages with ease and help them to make more sense when you listen to them in your car. The ability to send the person an auto response is great so they know you are driving and will send them a response when you can safely do that.

Conclusion:

This app is FREE and has been given a 3 1/2 out of 5 star rating.

Urbanspoon Android App Review

Description:

Nothing is more annoying than getting in the car with your friends and family to go eat, and then not know where you are going to eat!  Many of us do this because we want to go eat somewhere else so that we don’t have to make the food and clean it up, but because we go out to eat so much, it’s hard to think of places that would be different or taste good.  Well this problem is completely solvable with the Urbanspoon app for the Android.

Urbanspoon is a very useful app as it uses your GPS location to help you find and pinpoint a restaurant that sounds good.  The app has a very easy to use interface with a roller slider.  There are two ways you can use the app.  The first way is that you can search by category, location, and price to be able to find the right restaurant.  The interface has dollar signs next to the restaurant, and the more dollar signs it has, the more expensive the food is.  The great part is once you pull up a restaurant, there is a percentage shown at the bottom of the screen which tells you where the restaurant rates out of 100 percent.  It also lists reviews from other customers so that you can get an idea of what other people have said about the food listed on the app.  One of the coolest things about this app is that if you have no idea what you want to eat, simply shake the phone, and the app picks a random restaurant close to your location for you.  This is great because if you can’t make up your mind, the app will for you!

Features:

• very easy and simple to use app to help a person find a place to eat
• the app allows you to search by area, price, and type of food from a large list of restaurants in your area
• if you can’t make up your mind, simply shake the phone to get a random selection chosen
• The app gives a complete information screen on the restaurant you are choosing.  It shows the reviews, the overall rating, and lets you know how expensive the place is.
• The app works with google maps to help you find the restaurant of choice once you have decided on where to go.

Conclusion:

This app is FREE and has been given a 4 out of 5 star rating.