What's your favorite mobile phone travel guide?

April 18, 2017 5:43 PM

I'm looking for travel guides for my iPhone. Something that's a combination guidebook, map, and restaurant database that is well designed for using on the go from my phone.

In the past I've used Triposo as a mobile travel guide; it does a remarkable job of showing you nearby tourist amenities. But it's a little too much of a database and not enough an edited guidebook. I'm looking more for something like a Fodor's/Insight Guide kind of thing. Only in app form, not a book.

FWIW I'm going to London and Portugal, but I'm interested more in the general technology than specific guides. Bonus points for offline data caching, although I've got mobile maps all sorted out with Maps.Me. Also interested in hyper-specific guides like for the British Museum, but I'm guessing there's no good general form for those.

posted by Nelson to Travel & Transportation (7 answers total)

I like the trip advisor app. It lets you choose a city to completely download and includes offline maps. Curated lists plus the last bunch of reviews etc. Includes restaurants, activities, hotels, scenic stuff etc.
posted by chasles at 6:00 PM on April 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Lonely Planet's Guides app is good, but not amazing. In its favor, you can pre-download it for offline viewing, and it maintains a pretty up to date listing of things listed in the Lonely Planet for that city. The main app is free, but you'll have to pay for non-location stuff, like languages.
posted by themadthinker at 9:38 PM on April 18, 2017

Also interested in hyper-specific guides like for the British Museum, but I'm guessing there's no good general form for those.

The British Museum probably has its own guide-app, but I'd strongly consider picking up the Blue Guide for London ebook.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:35 AM on April 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Google Trips has worked well for me before
posted by fatfrank at 5:48 AM on April 19, 2017

We use Trip Advisor when we travel. Would recommend with caveats.

The major problem is rating inflation. When even fast-food places get 3.5 out of 5, we have what we call the MacDonalds floor (in the US---the Tims floor when we travel in Canada). If a place isn't significantly better than McDs, we don't bother with it.

But it's lead us to some nice places and it's decent for (traditional) accommodations.
posted by bonehead at 9:10 AM on April 19, 2017

Rick Steves was just saying that TripAdvisor isn't the best for ratings on restaurants or hotels but is great for finding activities. If you are looking for a guidebook type experience, get a library card with ebook access and check out/load up their guidebooks on your phone before you go. Another thing you can do is to search out newspaper and magazine articles (your library can help here, too) and save those to your phone (using Evernote or similar). I think that would work really well for a place like the British Museum.
posted by soelo at 9:52 AM on April 19, 2017

Check out Ulmon City Maps 2 Go, it does a lot of what you want offline when you have downloaded it before and provides real time tracking.
posted by Flashduck at 9:21 PM on April 19, 2017