The ten Best Car Apps for Smartphones
11/04/2013 – By Mark Takahashi
Smartphones are switching our lives: the way we think, the way we plan (or don’t) and certainly the way we use our cars. At the intersection of the smartphone and the automobile lies a vast chance for increases in speed, efficiency and entertainment. That’s where the car apps come in.
Whether you want to find your car, your destination or the cheapest gas in the area, it can all be accomplished on your phone. Spectacle testing, of course, is effortless with the right app. And now you can use your phone to diagnose problems or pacify the kids on a long journey. Of course, if you’re car shopping, Edmunds.com has a free app to help you find the best car for your particular needs, along with pricing and dealer inventory. But humility precludes us from including it on the list.
Otherwise, our beloved automotive apps are below. The list isn’t comprehensive or all-inclusive, but it’s a solid collection of the most useful and entertaining car apps available today.
Available for: iOS, Android and Blackberry
Why pay more for gas when you don’t have to? Driving around comparing pump prices certainly doesn’t make much sense, so that’s where gasbuddy.com comes in. The Web site posts local gas prices in an easy-to-use format and in the different grades, including diesel.
Rather than navigate to the site, you can now get all that information in a smartphone app. As an added bonus, you can even get driving directions.
Here at Edmunds, we use some pretty serious equipment in our instrumented testing. But you don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get spectacle data. Dynolicious uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometers to gauge lateral and longitudinal acceleration and horsepower. The results are 0-60 and quarter-mile numbers. You can graph, save and compare the results, too. There’s also Dynolicious Fusion ($12.99) that permits you to share your results online.
We ran the app against our $20,000 Racelogic Vbox and Dynolicious proved close enough. In both 0-60-mph and quarter-mile acceleration, the app was optimistic by inbetween 0.1 and 0.Trio 2nd. Lateral acceleration seemed to be acceptably close, too.
Available for: iOS and Android
Auto mechanics don’t have the best reputation for trustworthiness. Calling different mechanics around town for repair quotes can be a real agony. With Repair Pal, that legwork is done for you.
Just select your car and the type of repair needed, and it’ll drool out what you might expect to pay in your area. It’s based on the repairpal.com Web site and functions the same. We found Repair Pal’s estimates were slightly higher than the final price we paid for various repairs, but well within an acceptable margin.
Available for: iOS and Android
Why should the Russians have all the joy? Dash cams are a superb way to protect yourself from insurance fraudsters, bad drivers and perhaps even an undeserved ticket. Rather than shell out $50-$300 for a dedicated dash cam, you can simply convert your smartphone for a measly $0.99.
Besides the looping record function, Witness Driving also logs time, date, speed, location and acceleration in gs. There’s even an accident detection feature that can send a notification e-mail. Controls are plain and create little distraction. Of course, you’ll need a windshield climb on for your phone, but we found a broad selection online for under $Ten.
Available for: iOS and Android
How good is Waze? Good enough for Google to shell out more than a billion dollars to buy it. And that’s because Waze is more than a navigation app. It’s community driven, using user data to pinpoint traffic jams, accidents and gas prices in real time. It even warns you if law enforcement is right around the corner.
When mighty delays are shown, Waze will also route you around it as best it can. Traffic isn’t limited to highways and major arteries, either. Side streets can be included, too. Not only is Waze the best free navigation app, it is better than many pay apps, too.
Where’d I park? How much time do I have on the meter? How do I get back to that space? What’s around the area? There was a time when you’d have to open up several apps to reaction these questions. Oh, the horror!
With Honk, you can mark where you parked with a GPS pin. Even if you parked deep within the bowels of a subterranean structure, you can stir the pin, take a photo and make notes (including voice) of where you left the car. The app can also track how much time you have left on the meter, alerting you when time is about up.
While you’re out you can also locate the nearest coffee house, ATM or gas station. When you need to get back, there’s a breadcrumb trail feature to help you find your way. Take that, municipal revenue hounds.
Let’s face it: For most of us, car maintenance isn’t something over which we’ll lose sleep. But we can all agree that maintenance is an significant part of ownership, right? Car Minder makes it effortless.
Car Minder Plus is like having your own individual fleet manager in your pocket. This app will remind you when it’s time for scheduled maintenance as well as logging all of the service and repairs. You’ll have to input the maintenance schedule yourself from the possessor’s manual, but it’s worth it. Car Minder also tracks your fuel economy and can distill all of that data into an easy-to-read graph. On top of it all, you can manage numerous vehicles.
Available for: iOS and Android
And now for a little joy. Good racing games are infrequent. Good mobile racing games are even rarer. Somehow, Real Racing three squeezes fine graphics, stunning sound and entertaining gameplay into your smartphone. It’s a intense one, tho’, eating up more than a gig of memory, but hey, it’s free!
Tracks include Laguna Seca (minus the oak tree in the corkscrew), Spa, Bathurst, Silverstone, Suzuka and the Hockenheimring. There are also fairly a few variants of these tracks, too. Car highlights include the Audi R8, Bugatti Veyron, Koenigsegg CCXR, Lamborghini Aventador, McLaren F1, Pagani Zonda R, Porsche nine hundred eighteen Spyder and SRT Viper GTS.
Whether you have a plug-in hybrid or full-blown EV, finding a nearby charging station is a critical part of ownership. The PlugShare app makes it effortless by demonstrating you the closest charge station and cracking them down by which ones are home, public, quick-charge and in use.
You can also filter those results and further refine them by adding or deleting free stations, Tesla superchargers and access-restricted chargers. The app mirrors the plugshare.com site and offers driving directions, contact information and direct messaging with charger owners.
Let’s say you own an older car. Perhaps it’s something that predates front collision and lane departure warnings, and you think you’re missing out. Augmented Driving provides those features along with programmable speed warnings.
Augmented Driving relies intensely on visual data coming from the camera, and it’s remarkably accurate. Some alerts, like the lane departure warning can be tiresome since the app doesn’t recognize when you’re signaling, but you can disable its audible alarms. We found the front collision warnings functioned well, as they could be user-adjusted to the driver’s preference. As with the Witness Driving app, you’ll need to purchase a windshield climb on separately. Setup instructions were well illustrated and we were up and running in a matter of minutes.
iOnRoad is similar and is available for Android devices.