7 travel apps worth your time and money

If you are a travel enthusiast, this one’s for you. There is no dearth of traveling apps available in the play store but most of them are good for nothing, clunky and pretty bugging. And it can be pretty tedious to find the right ones from such a huge chunk. So, presenting to you five free travel and navigation apps that are worth your time, and two that are worth your money.

Memrise

Want to become fluent in French before your trip to Paris? Might not be possible, but that doesn’t mean you can’t commit a few choice phrases to memory. Memrise, developed by the memory champ Ed Cooke and Greg Detre, a Princeton neuroscientist, makes learning languages fun and strangely addictive through its mix of flashcards and audiovisual games.

Users of the free app can choose from among dozens of language courses, some of which are better thought-out than others. The romance languages, including French and Spanish, are all very good. Memrise also offers a “Pro” option, with more features, for $59.99 per year.

Flight Stats

Despite their popularity, you don’t ever need to pay for a flight status app. You can easily Google the information, and if you really need an app to do it for you, FlightStats is the only one you need.

FlightStats allows you to search by flight number, airport, and route and provides basic on-the-ground information at your departure and destination cities.

5 Every Day

We all have been through something like this once (may be more): You just want to be told where to go and what to do. Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt of the indie band Yacht created an app that curates a list of five off-the-beaten-path events, restaurants and activities in Los Angeles every day of the year. You’ll get suggestions for theatrical productions, hikes, a Chuck Klosterman reading or dive bars you didn’t know about.

The app is simple and intuitive and mines the city’s events calendar for interesting goings-on. 5 Every Day is free but allows for the unlimited “fave-ing” of events (that is, saving them for later) for an additional $1.99. It’s Los Angeles-only for now but hopefully, will expand to other cities.

Avast Photo Space

Remember, how you had to delete some of your last holiday pictures from your phone to make space for the last day of the trip. Avast Photo Space is a new app that aims to eliminate this quandary by connecting to Dropbox or a Google Drive account and uploading the original, high-res photos for safe keeping. You’re left with a smaller-sized, lower-resolution copy of the picture on your phone.

Units Plus

The interface is a little simplistic, but this is the best free currency and units converter that I’ve used. While the app is open, it downloads currency exchange rates every 15 minutes, keeping it remarkably up-to-date. It will also convert weight, volume, area, distance and nearly anything else you can think of. There is an ad-free version available for $2.99.

PAID APPS

Packing Pro

For all you organizing geeks, this Packing Pro is the app for you. It breaks down your pre-trip routine in such a granular way it’s almost impossible to forget anything. Lists for clothes, accessories, medical needs and toiletries are all available, as well as the ability to set priorities, organize and even photograph clothing and other items you need to bring (or purchase before you leave). Lists can be reused, making it easy to get a solid travel organization regime down pat. $2.99.

Human Resource Machine

For those of you who occasionally need a puzzle game to get through a particularly arduous flight or bus trip, Human Resource Machine is your perfect companion especially for those who like logic puzzles — the game is essentially set up as a series of cartoony programming challenges, and you have to create progressively more complicated lines of “code” to complete them. This is not a spaced-out, Candy Crush-like game, mind you — it demands brainpower. $4.99 in the App store.