How to have the best 8 Outdoor Apps on your Windows Phone
Do you love strolling outdoors having fun with your friends, travelling to distant lands and exploring the nature and its creativity? Well, if you are an outdoor persona who owns Windows phone (though some of these apps work with iPhone and iPad too) to take along with you where ever you go, then you can have the 8 outdoor apps for you to guide you at outdoor places, show you the distance you have traveled, things you would love to watch and come in contact with on your way and much more.
1. Wikicamps Australia App
Costs $7.39
If you wish to go for camping outdoors then WikiCamps is a dynamic user generated camping app for Australia where all the sites are added, edited and shared by users for you to explore. Wikicamps also works offline with the ability to download all site and user content.
The database within this app is constantly growing and always being updated with the latest information about sites from all over Australia. With over 22,000 listings including Caravan Parks, Camp Sites, Backpacker Hostels, Day Stops, Points of Interest and Information Centres you will find that each site has loads of information to help you plan your get away from activities including swimming, fishing, pet rules, Wi-Fi hotspots, pricing, toilets, showers, and much more.
You can also use Wiki Camps to add and view photos from other happy campers all around Australia. So you can see what the camp site is like before you go there. You can add them to your favourites or rate them if you wish.
The Compass and Satellite finder will only work on devices which have an inbuilt compass. Also WikiCamps works best on devices which have a GPS.
This app supports Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 mobile phones.
2. Coastal Watch App
Cost: $3.09
Why not surf and explore the Australian Coasts. The Coastalwatch app is the most comprehensive app for Australian surfing and coastal conditions. You can Surf Live Cams, Surf Reports, Surf Forecasts for 85 and over popular beaches and surf spots -the largest network in Australia.
Popular known as Surf Stitch app on iTunes and Google Play here it is for Windows phone which is redesigned and rebuilt for Windows 8 Phone operating system and delivers a seamless user interface.
If you do not wish to pay for this app you can have a 8 week free trail offer. The most interesting feature of this app is that you can look at Surf Cam photo that is updated every 10 minutes. You will create your Coastal watch account once you download the app and log in to unlock many premium features
Also Surf Report is updated early every morning by local surf experts showing you Local Wind speed and direction which is updated every 30 minutes. You can have Live Wind Graph and 5 Day Surf Forecast by an expert. Also read Local Tide Times , Water Temperature , Weather Forecast and Map View and GPS Near Me location finder too to know where you are.
3. Field Guide to Australian Birds app
Cost $36.79
Field Guide to Australian Birds is brought to you by Michael Morcombe’s and is the most comprehensive guide to Australian birds. This app is for windows phone and at iTunes is is known by the Michael Morcombe and David Stewart eGuide to the Birds of Australia. The app features optimised controls where you can swipe to view next or previous species, one-tap enlargement of an image and rotate the device landscape to enlarge an image completely and fit the width of the screen.
You can have over 3000 hi-res bird images covering over 790 bird species. You will have most bird species showing on detailed distribution map with detailed text descriptions of almost all bird species including songs and calls, measurements and breeding behaviour. You will find over 1800 carefully-selected and edited sound recordings for over 600 species represented with multiple call examples showing the full range of vocalizations.
You can also compare any two images, maps, or sounds, side by side on your phone screen. If you wish to locate any bird in your area you can do so by using filter by geographic location. With smart search you will have the ability to search by distinguishing features such as size, colour, physical features, habitat and also exclude certain types of birds.
4. Outdoor Navigation App
Costs: $6.09
Outdoor Navigation App is there to bring your outdoor activity in your everyday life. With GPS on this is an excellent tool for biking, jogging, skiing, hiking, geo-caching, boating, flying and many other sporting activities.
Some of its features include Online Street, Satellite and Topo maps from Bing, Google, OpenStreetMap, OpenCycleMap, OpenPisteMap, OpenHikingMap. In Offline map mode you can download maps and later use it without internet connection search places or POIs track recording, creating custom Photo POIs – Geocaching LOC, GPX and KML file support.
You can do online Route Planning from A to B (car or pedestrian), manual route drawing – Turn indications for routes – Outdoor navigation with Digital Compass – Trip Computer with 40 selectable tools with multiple layout options – Track, analyze and compare your tracks on Charts – Share your tracks and POIs via E-mail or Facebook with embedded Chart and Map view – SkyDrive integration with file import, export, backup, restore.
You will have Speedometer with speed limit warning feature and displaying your geo-tagged photos from Pictures Hub on the Map. Also send emergency message via SMS or E-mail in English, German, Italian, Spanish and French languages. If you wish to have this app in Trial Mode you can record only 3 Tracks and create only 5 Waypoints (POIs).
5. Cycle Track GPS App
Cost: Free
Cycle Tracks GPS app helps you track your rides and upload them. When riding, you’ll get a precise route and a real-time stats readout. Later on you can upload them to OneDrive for later review or sharing. You can connect directly with Strava for a one-time purchase. Then, you will be able to upload an unlimited number of tracks to Strava quickly and easily from within the app.
The UI is designed for easy access even with hand gloves on. You can swipe up the time/distance readout to reveal large start/stop/pause buttons and the access to other menus. For the best riding experience, you can purchase true voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. Create routes on Ride with GPS, download them to your phone, and follow them out on the road.
6. Runtastic PRO App
Cost: $6.09
Runtastic PRO is your perfect fitness tracking app for all of your outdoor activities like running, walking, hiking, biking, yoga, strength training and more. You can track your progress, boost motivation and performance, burn more calories and become your best fitness self.
Some of the App features include – Track activities to view your routes utilizing GPS. You can records duration, distance, calories burned, speed, elevation change and more stats. With manual entry of workouts you can add treadmill, strength training and other indoor workouts. With Runtastic Routes you can flag one of thousands of routes on Runtastic.com and sync it automatically with your windows phone. You can also find and add friends directly in your Runtastic app and start sharing your accomplishments on twitter or facebook.
7. Touch Mountain App
Cost: $3.09
If you love exploring outdoor mountains and have the thrill of beautiful weather and breathtaking views then this app is perfect for you. You can know with this app as which mountain peaks you are seeing also this app acts as a guide to the mountains and lets you discover more peaks and high altitudes with details about them
You can use the augmented reality view to discover peaks through your camera’s viewfinder. If you want to find mountains within a longer distance, you can search for them or discover them using the map view. For every mountain, TouchMountain gathers information from GPS, live webcams, the current weather, nearby Wikipedia articles and allows you to build hiking maps with Bing.
8. Route Tracker App
Cost: Free
Route tracker app is free to download for your windows phone. While you are outdoors jogging, walking, biking, skiing or any other activity you want to track with your phone can be easily done with this free application. The very user friendly interface makes the application easy to understand and use.
Using the phone GPS you can record your tracks and see them on the map in real time. The unique replay function allows you to replay your saved routes. The app has a “buddies” system which allows you to see your friends on the map. Create a network of friends to meet up with or track their positions when you are trekking, skiing etc. It is fun and probably the easiest way to meet up when outdoors.
You can also see your buddies who use other devices on your map when they run the ‘buddy gps tracker’ application which can be found on the Google play store. Statistics indicating speed/time/altitude are recorded also. You can save your tracks on your phone to replay them later. See step by step how far how fast and at what altitude you were at. By storing the data on the phone, you can retrieve it at any time. The ‘replay’ functionality is not only easy to use, but fun also to check where you were at. The ‘split screen’ replay is also fun to use and to see both a street and satellite view of your route.
This app uses an advanced filtering algorithm, and manages to limit the erroneous readings of the GPS and thus produce a more reliable track of the route taken by you when outdoors.
Any other outdoor app you would suggest?
