You may laugh... But I’ve finally moved into the 21st century and got myself a smartphone (iPhone 5)!

Never bothered till now as Norfolk (unless you happen to live in Norwich) has never been that smart when it comes to phone signals, but as of last week I can actually get a 3G signal in North Norfolk without having to climb to the top of a church tower, praying to the gods and waving my phone at the heavens!

Now to the point…

Apps appear to be a bit of a mine field – there are so many, some crap, some good, some free, some bloody expensive!

What apps are worth having and what aren’t? What are you lot all using? What are your favourites? Particularly after biking/travel related apps (but I’m up for anything else that might amuse me!)

Be great to have a thread dedicated to some useful motorcycling apps. So what are you using…

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If you are out on a ride with mates that also have smart phones, then you best download the app called Find Friends, that way if one of you's gets lost, the lost party can send you his position, and you received his exact latitude, longitude and can find him / her easily.

You should have Google Maps better than the Ordnance Survey Maps these days.

If you want the ultimate Sat Nav app its not free but cheaper than a Garmin (tenner) and that is CoPilot Live. very very good.

If you live in London and your bike is kaput, and you are left on foot, there's an app that tells you what bus / train to catch to get you back home and even points out on the map how to get to the bus stop and that app is: CITYMAPPER London

If you are with the AA recovery then you ought to download the AA App because if you breakdown in the middle of nowhere at night and you don't know exactly where you are, the app send AA your exact location so they'll find you.

Also get an app called Around Me, once again using Satellite pointers, it will find you the nearest, restaurant, petrol station, chemist, mechanic whatever. you just search for it and the app will list you all the options near you

I can't think of anything else...

For up petrol heads, I find the motorsport calender fantastic, just about everything on there

Speedhud is pretty good, displays speed reversed on screen, so you can place your phone on the dash of the car for a heads up display reflected on the inside of your windscreen

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you win some, lose some, crash some
K+N filter, snorkel removed, homemade kev mod (with his blessing), co raised,
Pipeworx cans, r1 led back light, under tray removed, small indicators, handguards, cnc short levers,

I don't have an apple product, but have read about Viewranger, which is a a free GPS mapping app that works on both.

http://www.viewranger.com/en-gb

Allows downloading of openstreetmap maps and online/offline route planning.

I'm currently researching replacements for my laptop based photo and GPS trail management while on the road with an android tablet and came across viewranger and it sounds very promising for the GPS side of things.

You can also buy "tiles" (100sqm) of OSM maps at 10p a tile.

I used to have an app called MCN Ride Logger on my iPhone 3. Nice bit of kit, cost about a fiver. It logs your ride and gives you a dashboard with max speed, max accel/decel G, average speed and so on. Also it can display a map of your ride with the speeds and Gs for each section, and the usual time and distance information etc. It was fun to play with, but needed a bit more development, as an incoming phone call could switch it off in mid-ride, and sometimes it needed shutting down an re-starting when it froze. Downside (and this applies to any app that uses the GPS chip) is that it gets very hot in use and eats the battery alive, so it needs to be kept in a cool location and really needs a permanent 12v supply.

I upgraded to a iPhone 4 and the app was not compatible. I have not bothered replacing it with a newer version. Fun while it lasted, kind of thing.

There is a free satnav app called NavFree which works well, but I think it needs a 3G connection to work, i.e. the maps are downloaded on the fly, not stored.

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XT660R (2006)
XT600E (1994)
Triumph Trident 750 (1992)
My blog: http://goingfastgettingnowhere.blogspot.com/

Good luck with that Pleiades !!!!
I got myself a smart phone for my first trip to Morocco a couple of years back, IT BLEW MY HEAD UP, far to complicated , back on a BRICK now !!!!
Phil

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"I'm here for a good time, not a long time"