Best apps for drivers – what to download for your car?
Applications as a boon of everyday life can make our daily functioning much more pleasant. This also applies to drivers, who can make their journey easier with their help. Of course, a driver’s life is not only about travelling, it’s also about servicing and maintaining the vehicle. With that in mind, here’s a breakdown of the top rated apps for the car.
Dedicated applications
Car owners usually give credit to the brand they keep in their garage. After all, it is responsible for their purchase, so they can move in a fast and safe way. Manufacturers have therefore decided to release a number of applications that support the comfort of the vehicle. In Seat Connect, for example, we can remotely access the status of a vehicle, i.e. check doors, windows, lights, measure time and check current mileage. The application also remembers where you last parked your car and shows you the way to get there. In the application dedicated to new Seats we can also find manager services for trip planning, route management, air conditioning and car status reporting, which can be useful in emergency situations. The German company’s app works similarly, except that My BMW also offers electromobility optimization, i.e. intelligent micro mobility support for range planning and charging management, charging and electric range planning, finding charging stations nearby and viewing battery charging history.
For Fords, FordPass Pro is available, and Mercedes owners can enjoy the Mercedes me app, which includes a rich system of complementary apps that group together in an ecosystem of developer solutions for drivers.
However, these solutions are not always praised, given the limited number of vehicles they can handle and the hardware requirement that they are not compatible with every smartphone. Moreover, users complain about updates that spoil their comfort with the user.
Don’t get lost – Google Maps
As usual, there could not miss in this list an application known probably all cell phone users. It is especially well known to Android users, but iPhone owners also often use this solution, of course we are talking about Google Maps. It’s great navigation for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. Allows you to discover new places, informs about attractions and nearby restaurants. The app also has an indicator feature that shows you how likely you are to like a particular spot. Maps has also the possibility of creating a list of your favourite places and allows you to share them with others. Mapps also store location history which allows you to return to them after time, thanks to the Timeline.
To be honest, however, the application has uncontrollable problems. Sometimes it rotates uncontrollably, making it difficult to interpret the location, often leading us in the opposite direction to the intended direction. This happens rarely, but still. It can also choose a longer route than we would like. After all the algorithm’s decisions are rather trying to work in our favour. Its definite advantage is the fact that it works in the background, which allows us to return to the application with the point of travel still in it, such as. when you need to check your text message (not while driving of course) or make a call. The function is free and available for everyone, it is often accompanied by a package of updates, it is simple and intuitive with a large range of practical applications.
Android Auto – command system for drivers
Android Auto is a panel that gives easy access to the phone on the display in the car. Put the phone into the holder, start the engine and check! Besides the touch, it is fully integrated with the voice assistant. Android Auto will give us directions, send an SMS, call the bank. Drivers also claim that the system from Android is much more functional than those implied by the manufacturers. Just “OK, Google!”. Google maps are synchronized with the application, but not only. The overlay also supports navigation systems such as: AutoMapa, TomTom AmiGO, Sygic, Gaia GPS and Waze. . The application needs permissions for calls and sms, but can also use Messenger, WhatsApp, or Skype, depending on our needs and mode of operation. Music and streaming services are also compatible with this solution. You can easily listen to a podcast or your favorite playlist on Spotify, Tidal, Deezer or Google Play Music. The number of supported applications is growing day by day. The full list can be found at http://g.what/androidauto/apps.
Yanosik – a friend on a journey
The undoubted advantage of the application for a Pole is that many of us use it. The application owes its popularity to the warning of speed cameras, road checks or collisions and other road accidents that occur on the route we have taken. This is also a factor in the app’s black pirit, as it can serve as a convenience for road pirates who react in time before the legal threat of their charge.
The application warns us well in advance, allowing us to change our route even before we get stuck in a serious traffic jam. We also get on-board information about nearby drinking spots and gas stations along the way. Yanosik also includes a video recorder. Use the camera of your smartphone and protect yourself from abuse by other road users. Inside we will also buy cheap insurance, use a free system of selling checked cars on Autoplac and we can enjoy unattended payments on freeway gates using Yanosik Pay.
Autopay – saves you from e-TOLL
We wrote about e-TOLL system in November last year. Thanks to Autopay we can forget about tolls on the A1 and A4 on the Katowice-Krakow line, in some parking lots and for partner car washes. Autopay requires from us:
- recording of vehicle data,
- filling in basic data about yourself,
- choosing a payment method.
The app allows you to integrate with your payment card, charge directly from your bank account or have it automatically debited directly from your bank. Registration is available via mobile application (App Store, Google Play, AppGallery) as well as via website or banking service.
Autopay system was praised for its intuitiveness at the gates, where in a few seconds after identifying the registration number, it raised the barrier and automatically charged the card or added a charge to the phone bill. The solution is a pure automation of the payment process, which was supposed to minimize stopping at toll gates, but now that the gates are gone and viaTOLL has been replaced by e-TOLL, friendly solutions like Autopay will certainly not leave drivers indifferent.
Waze and AutoMapa – substitution
Applications supported by Android Auto at the same time not being an alphabet tandem. AutoMapa is a Polish application which has a CB pack for chatting with other users, and Waze has a voiceover selection and calculates the route duration based on the current road situation, not the standard journey time. Both navigations are good substitutes for Google Maps and both have their bases of followers, whose drivers form certain communities.
OBDeleven – diagnosis by e-mail
OBdleven is a complementary app to the company’s device, which monitors the status of our vehicle and reports it in real time. You just need to download it to your phone and it is supported by all operating systems, namely iOS, Android OS and Harmony OS. After creating an account and connecting via Bluetooth to a device plugged into the OBD II socket in the car, we have everything. The application package details: full scanning, automatic VIN identification, clearing of fault codes from all control units, reading of control unit information, e-mail log of diagnostic data, battery status, information about the engine, its equipment and faults, information about the control unit.
All this accompanied by graphs, live visualizations, user manuals, option of manual programmer, workshop, backup of the history of the car program, and output test. A lot of it. The application gathers its fans and out of 17 009 in Google Play its average rating is 4.4 stars, so most people like its usefulness.
Fuelio – fuel log
Economical driving is on the lips of more and more drivers, not only those in Poland. Pandemic, crisis, war abroad. All of these factors create population uncertainty, market volatility and wobbly inflation just waiting to eat the value of our capital for an appetizer. Prices at gas stations, but also in stores cause that most people want to drive as cheaply as possible. In addition to not burning the engine and driving slowly, you can also focus on controlling your expenses, which is what Fuelio is for.
This application will help us estimate periodic expenses for the car and optimize them in terms of maintenance of it and ourselves. Maintenance costs concern not only refuelling, but also servicing, which can be helpful to determine when unusual fuel consumption is noticed. The app also has the ability to find the cheapest petrol stations and gets us acquainted with other drivers’ opinions about them. Fuelio is the financial diary of every economic driver.
ParkMe and Mobilet, or find and pay for parking
ParkMe is an application whose task is to find the nearest parking lot. It remembers the location of the car, allows you to make notes and reminds you when the stop is about to end. This way you avoid additional charges. Mobilet can be used to pay for parking. Mobilet has the advantage of not needing change at the parking meter. In fact, you don’t even have to look for it, as payment is done remotely and cashless, and the driver has full control over the parking time and is billed according to the actual duration of parking.
For those who have problems with finding a parking place, there is TiPark application in test phase, which already has over 14 thousand users.
OTOMOTO – sell and buy new
OTOMOTO is a service known probably to all drivers. We can buy or sell cars, motorcycles or parts for them needed. OTOMOTO application allows quick access to automotive offers from the OTOMOTO database.pl, the leader in online car buying and selling ads on the Polish market. As many as several hundred thousand attractive offers will be within your reach! Take advantage of your smartphone’s capabilities. Now you can find or sell any vehicle even faster! – we read in the description of the application.
The application has been rated by over 100 thousand users, which gave it almost four stars. However, it lacks a bit. – The app has gotten worse. In the past when you saved your ads and new ones appeared you could see that there are e.g. 5c new ones. Now unfortunately it keeps adding the number of new ones to the existing ones so after the first search for example 7 new ones, the next day 13, then 20…can’t it show only new ones since the last ob… – writes one of the users.
The life of a driver is not easy, especially in the Polish countryside, where the roads sometimes cry out for vengeance to heaven, and drivers shout at each other from behind the windows, gesticulating sweepingly forced priority. They were thought of when creating solutions to sweeten their bitter moments on the road. Surprisingly most of the driver apps are very decent, well except maybe e-TOLL.