Turn your iPhone into an even more versatile travel tool by installing these 5 free and useful applications. These iPhone applications will help you keep travel of flights, book hotel reservations, and connect with other travelers in real time.
For those of you who travel without a cell phone but have an iPod Touch, many of these applications will work for it as well.
Travelocity TravelTools
This free iPhone application stores your itineraries and lets you check the statuses of all your connecting flights. Get alternate flights if you’re really in a rush and book them directly from the application itself. You can also find hotels (and reviews) near your current location or in your destination city and book them when you land.
One one the best features Travelocity TravelTools offers are security wait line estimates for airports across the US.
SitOrSquat
Similar to The Bathroom Diaries, SitOrSqaut is a detailed database of over 50,000 bathrooms all over the world. The internal iPhone GPS tells the application where you are and lets you search for bathrooms and refine the search criteria (i.e. handicap restrooms) if you want.
Those of you in the US who don’t have iPhones can text Mizpee to find nearby toilets.
Skype
An essential software for digital nomads, Skype comes in an iPhone application version. Skype, the iPhone application lets you do all of the wonderful (and money saving) things that Skype the full blown computer application does. Call or chat with other Skype users for free and make outgoing international calls for much less than your provider would charge.
Currency
Stay on top of the latest exchange rates for over 90 currencies for free. Simple and straightforward, Currency has the rates for all of the major currencies you’ll run into.
The Travel Channel GO
One thing I noticed in the Apple iTunes store was that there was a city guide in the form of an iPhone application for every city imaginable. Unfortunately not many of them were free, but I stumbled on The Travel Channel GO, which does a good job as a replacement. It comes with Travel Channel restaurant, hotel, and nightlife recommendations by both Travel Channel’s hosts and other travelers reporting from their iPhones – all for free.
If you really want a more detailed city guide for your iPhone, individual iPhone application guides run about 99 cents each.
Other Options
There are a number of other useful iPhone and iPod Touch hacks for travelers and other iPhone apps for travelers that you can get on your device with a little bit of jail breaking. Many of these applications will require Internet access so brush up on how to bum a Wi-Fi signal on the road before you have trouble finding a good network connection.
Remember that you don’t need fancy hardware like an iPhone (although it doesn’t hurt) to become location independent. A cheap unlocked Nokia and a decent laptop can make for a large, but suitable iPhone replacement.
[photo by: William Hook]
We’ve installed the Skype application and it’s worked exceptionally well for us while so far. The only problem is the time zone difference and staying up until 2am so you can talk to people at 5PM at home!
I also recommend an app called Duo which will let you update your Twitter and Facebook Status at the same time. We have people following us in different ways and they can all be in touch and up to date.
Currency gets 5 stars for ease of use and figuring out the translations.
Our favorite application is Shakeitphoto which takes better pictures than the standard camera app, and looks cooler!
When we were in Ireland we unlocked our iPhone for $30 Euro which was just a jailbreak with Cydia installer and an ultrasn0w (zero) unlocking package, works with version 3.0. The unlocked iPhone has helped us out of a couple of jams and when your only using data the pay as you go SIM’s go pretty far.
If you do jailbreak your phone get Cycorder which allows you to record video in decent quality.
cheers
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the awesome recommendations. Duo certainly sounds like a time saver, but does it give you the option to post to only one or the other? I update Twitter far more than Facebook.
Just checked out Shakeitphoto, looks like a nice app, and only for 99 cents a good deal.
Jailbreak does come in very handy, especially if traveling internationally.
Duo allows you to update either fb or twitter, but if you use twitter more you’ll probably get more out of twitterific or some other twitter specific application.
do you have a jailbroken iPhone? Any good apps you can recommend on that front?
I’ve got a jailbroken iPod touch, and use these apps:
http://www.foxnomad.com/2008/01/18/the-best-ipod-touch-and-iphone-hacks-for-travelers/
I’d say the most useful I’ve found are NetStumbler, Mobile Web Docs, and the Ninenedo Emulator for those long flights and train rides 🙂
Why not try Igoshi?
It’s very simple – but will work for anyone anywhere when your language skills let you down.
http://www.standardease.co.uk/igoshi/ or straight from the Apple Appstore:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=323677270&mt=8
Thanks for the link Stuart – looks like a useful app. Anything you want to add about it here?
Thanks Anil – useful yes and very easy to use. We’ve had sales in a few diverse places showing it has cross-cultural appeal.
Also had a few “nay sayers” describing it as silly but I expect they didn’t quite get it – but that’s OK too!
I have used it myself as a backup for my shoddy Italian – it works 🙂
All the best,
Stuart
Appreciate you posting the link here – if it can help me order beer in 100 different countries I’d say it’s useful!