SplashTravel has your jet-setting back
by Eric March on June 24, 2009 at 9:45 am
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App Name: | SplashTravel |
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| Developer: | SplashData |
Version: | 1.0 | |
| Publisher: | SplashData |
Size: | 1.5 MB |
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| Category: | Utilities / Travel |
Price: | $4.99 |
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Now that they’ve brought their existing catalog up to date on the iPhone, SplashData seems be set to expand their lineup now, and the first of these new additions is SplashTravel.
Yeah, we’ve seen all-in-one utilities before, usually in the form of calculators and converters. They’ve been good, of course, but this particular all-in-one app is aimed squarely at air travelers, and it seems to cover just about all of the possible bases you could want in a trip planner. Just have a look at this lovely and voluminous bullet point list:
- Automatic location detection with optional manual setting
- World time for two zones on the main page
- World map showing time zones and day/night zones
- Currency converter with live updating and optional manual setting
- Time and day calculators
- Unit converters for all major units
- Basic tip calculator with post/pre-tax toggle and party size
- Clothing size comparison charts for all common items of apparel between the USA, Europe, UK and Japan
- Trip planner (see below)
- Extensible packing list allowing you to check off things you need to pack, and allowing for the addition of new items and new categories to put them in
- Expense list to allow you to keep track of your spending — great for keeping to a budget or for those of you getting corporate to pick up the tab
- A list of the world’s country codes and top-level internet domains, plus a list of US area codes and state abbreviations
- A massive list of company contact information broken down by airlines, car rental outfits, hotels, and travel services, which includes phone numbers, reservation numbers (where applicable) and tappable web addresses
The trip planner alone needs its own couple of paragraphs. Here, you can create all of the planned details of your trip (internet access required for this part): You can configure your flight(s), which lets you set the travel date, departure city and arrival city (by city or airport code). From there it will retrieve a live list of available flights for the chosen date across all airlines that go between the two cities, and display them in order of departure time from the airport so you can pick which flight on that date you want to take. Once a flight is chosen it will even give you the available details of that flight, including flight number, arrival time, gate (if available), live schedule notices (known delays, cancellations, etc.), baggage claim details (if available), and even what kind of craft you’ll be flying in.
In addition to flight planning, you can also note rental car reservations (company, location, start date/time and end date/time, confirmation number), train and bus tickets (departure/arrival locations, date/time, confirmation number), hotel reservations, restaurant reservations (name, date/time, and the restaurant’s phone number), and general events. And any all of these things can be added to a trip as needed, and you can have any number of the same things added to a given trip.
The only thing that might confuse is the world map on the home page: It instructs you to rotate to expand the map to full screen. What it doesn’t tell you is that it only works if you rotate clockwise. Not a big deal, but since the first time I tried I rotated counter-clockwise, I initially deemed it non-functional. Ideally, the world map should work in either landscape orientation. A small complaint, but worth mentioning so you don’t end up rotating counter-clockwise and wondering as I did why it refused to cooperate, and if there was something wrong with your accelerometer — because it’s a known bug that the accelerometer can sometimes go senile if initially calibrated while lying flat.
Besides that small complaint though, SplashTravel is a surprisingly comprehensive and feature-rich all-in-one travel companion that goes beyond simple conversion, calculation and list-making by doing a lot of the work for you, retrieving flights and schedules and giving you instant access to contact information for all of the primary trip-related elements of your journey. You don’t even have to dial any of them, either. Just find the company you’re looking for tap on the desired phone number. I’m not a jet-setter, mind you — matter of fact, I’ve never flown, unless you count that time I fell out of the wood fort during recess in grade 2, but that was more plummeting than flying — or if you prefer, I aimed at the ground but failed to miss. Either way, for those of you who do travel, this is an essential companion to streamline and simplify your planning, and it doesn’t even need to be stuffed in your carry-on amongst your mid-flight toiletries and that thing which looks embarrassingly like a “personal toy” on the X-ray monitor but really, really isn’t.
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