The Top 5 Navigation Apps for Smart Phones

Navigation Apps for Smart Phones

The dawn of the smart-phones has brought about not only the phenomena of increasing head injuries as people walk into lamp posts while sending text message to their friends and playing Angry Birds. More interestingly however, the mass adoption of these lifestyle devices has brought about a renegotiation with the physical landscape and the way we interact with our environments. Here are the top 5 Navigation Apps for Smart Phones.

Navigation Apps photo
Photo by IntelFreePress Navigation Apps for Smart Phones

Not only have smart phones effectively made the trusty old Sat Nav obsolete, they’ve left the old timer trudging off into the distanced red-faced and feeling dejected. You see, a smart phone just tell you where you are and where to go, it tells you where your friends think you should, or recommends places it thinks you want go , yep it can read your mind.

So what are the top five navigational apps out at the moment for the iPhone?

  1. Tom Tom Sat Nav

All the functionality of a full sized Tom Tom Sat Nav, in one tint app. This allows you to do everything you would with a regular sat nav, on your phone. You can set a location and have the app read out directions to you in a range of hilarious voices, as well as save locations.

2. FourSquare

Foursquare is as much a game as a social network. It allows you to publish your physical location to all your friends so they can keep tabs on your whereabouts 24/7 – if you so wish! Find great places in hometown and recommend venues to others by adding tips. You can also get vouchers and exclusive deals by becoming the ‘major’ of certain locations.

  1. Layar

Layar is an augmented reality app that uses your phone’s camera to take a snapshot of your environment and label it with markers that show points of interest. The bigger the marker, the closer the point of interest, simply walk towards it virtual signposts to find the nearest coffee house or gym

  1. Track Me

This is a great app for anxious parents. Simply get your kids to install the app on their phone and you can track where they are and whether or not they are using their phone. Only problem is you may have some difficulty convincing your kids to install this one!

  1. Google Maps

Not strictly an app since it comes as standard with the phone, Google Maps is like a ‘diet’ sat nav. You can now determine exactly where you are on the map and plot a route to your desired location, particularly useful for on-foot journeys.

Joe is a smart-phone lover and and blogger for a car shop selling some great sat nav deals

Cell Phone Keypads Disappearing

Cell Phone Keypads Disappearing

At a recent CTIA Wireless trade show and at trade shows across America, more and more new cell phone models are replacing the numeric keypad for a full keyword. This is a welcome sign for those that like to text and like to use a full type-writer style keyboard when texting. Another popular input device is the touch screen made popular by the Apple iPhone. The industry is adapting to the large volume of text messages being sent which increased three times to 1 trillion in 2008 compared to 2007. During this same period of time the number of calls made only increased by 5%.

Apple Numeric Keypad IIe
Apple Numeric Keypad IIe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

International Users

Two manufacturers are coming out with new designs that do feature the numeric keypad, Nokia and Sony Ericson. From reports by international users, only North American consumers favor the full type-writer keyboard while other countries have adapted to the numeric keypad for their texting. Since Nokia and Sony Ericson are more popular abroad and have smaller market share in America, it makes sense for them to continue developing these types of devices.

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