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Six Essential Android Apps for Business Travelers
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More than ever, business travelers are relying on Android smartphones to help get them where they're going on time, stay in touch with family and colleagues, and keep track of work-related expenses. Here are six essential Android apps for busy business travelers.
More than ever, business travelers are relying on smartphones to help get them where they’re going on time, stay in touch with family and colleagues, and keep track of work-related expenses.
And while the Apple iPhone seems to get all the love from the media these days, Android smartphones have won the hearts and minds of many a business traveler. A recent report said 30,000 Android smartphones are activated every day.
So what are the most-essential business-travel apps for Android users? This week, social media news and information website Mashable has picked six Android apps that “we believe are essential to any business trip. They will help keep you organized and focused on the business you need to take care of, no matter where you are.”
Here Mashable’s Top 6 essential Android apps for business travelers:
Expensify imports your business-travel receipts from your credit-card accounts in order to create convenient PDF reports. Its simple user interface makes adding cash expenses, logging mileage and uploading images of your receipts quick and easy, the website says.
The kicker? “How can you hate an application with “expense reports that don’t suck” as its tagline?” Mashable says.
Traveling overseas? Talk to Me is a simple app that can help you bridge the language barrier. The app translates what you’re saying into another language in real time. The best part, Mashable notes, is it can be set as a widget on your home-screen for quick access.
Keeping track of travel is no longer as simple as tracking departure and arrival -- you need a full-time personal assistant to keep track of flight schedules, rewards points and miles, airline restrictions, hotel and excursion itineraries and more. TripIt’s master dashboard serves as that personal organizer. It will also allow you to share their travel plans with the rest of your team, so you can coordinate travel.
For its flexibility and functionality, Mashable calls TripIt the “cream of the crop” of trip-organizing apps.
The Box.net lets you and your team easily share documents on the run, particularly helpful if you need to get up-to-date on business documents and you don’t have easy access to a laptop. Mashable says having access to your company’s database of documents through Box.net “could mean the difference between being prepared on the road and being a bust at that big meeting.”
Aloqa services as a pocket concierge, letting you know where to go in cities and destinations on your trip. Unlike other travel apps, such as Yelp, Aloqa automatically notifies you of the interesting restaurants, events and places near you.
Mashable calls these notifications “killer.” Once you set up your interests (or channels), the app doesn’t just give you a laundry list of top-rated destinations nearby, it drills down to such things as “top rated night clubs according to Yelp within walking distance.” Customization here is key: the app allows you to find the type of environment (five-star restaurant, cafe, nightclub, etc.) most suited to your business meeting.
FlightTrack tracks flight times, gates, delays and more. The app also easily syncs with TripIt app itineraries without neeing to enter anything by hand. FlightTrak tracks over 5000 airports and more than 1,400 airlines. Best yet: It has an offline mode for in-flight use.
