Best Android Apps for the Wait at Your Flight Gate

by Joanna Clark May 21, 2012 12:51 PM – Leave your thoughts

Bags checked, security cleared, gate found… all with an hour to spare.

Travelling can be a frantic experience, until quick lines or an unexpected delay has you at the gate, with time to kill. But thanks to your smartphone or tablet, the ‘hurry-up- and-wait’ doesn’t have to be a drag.

Whether you’re aiming for productivity or cures for boredom – here are the top six apps that will make your wait at the flight gate fly by – even if you won’t be flying anytime soon:

Tango Video Calls – Missing a friendly face during your travels? With Tango, make free phone and video calls over cellular networks (or Wi-Fi) to anyone who has Tango installed on their smartphone, tablet, or PC (which is pretty easy, since the app is free). Another new feature – free group video messaging to record and share videos with any of your contacts.

Tango Video Calls Free Tango Voice & Video Calls offers Free Voice and Video Calls! Now you can leave your friends video messages when they don’t pick up your call! To send a video message without calling, long press on your friends name and follow the prompts. Watch your video messages by tapping the Messages tab in Tango.

Pulse News – Stay on top of your favorite RSS feeds and web content, on and offline. Simply add the website feeds, scroll through content and share the best posts with social networks. With all of your go-to information in one place, staying informed on the road is a breeze.

Pulse News Free Pulse News Reader. A beautiful application that makes browsing news from websites and social networks fun and engaging. Pulse takes your favorite websites (including Facebook) and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Tap on an article, and you will see a clean and elegant view of the story. Sharing a story via Facebook, Twitter or email is as easy as two taps. Pulse has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Techcrunch and more. Experience Pulse today – you will never look at news the same way again.

FlightView Elite – Be the gatekeeper, plan out the wait with up-to-the-minute flight status information. See the location of your incoming aircraft so you can roam the terminal shops or hit the bathroom without worry. This combined with social sharing, integration with your calendar, and destination weather forecasts, creates an empowered flyer.

FlightView Elite FlightTracker Free, $3.99 FlightView Flight Tracker. Real-time flight tracking from the industry leaders. Track flights with 1 endpoint in N. America live & save them to your My Trips list. Get instant alerts when flight status changes. Easily share your trip itinerary or flight status. View a national airport delay map with weather, plus see weather at airports worldwide.

TuneIn Radio – Tunes from where you’re going or tunes from where you’re from – the TuneIn Radio app has over 50,000 stations and 1+ million on-demand programs to access. The streaming shows means local stations are available when you’re down the street, or half way around the world.

TuneIn Radio Free, $0.99 TuneIn Radio. Browse and listen to radio — live, local and global. From RadioTime. Listen live to your favorite radio stations, DJs and programs and find new ones on local, global and Internet radio. Find your faves with over 40,000 channels of music, sports, news, podcasts and national networks like BBC, NPR, SWR. TuneIn for Android is powered by RadioTime. For an ad-free version try RadioTime.

Evernote – Write and sync notes across all devices, save and share files, send tweets, capture photos… Evernote coins itself as an extension of your brain, and that’s exactly what it can be. This app can turn downtime at the gate into a productive wait.

Evernote Free Evernote turns your Android phone into an extension of your brain. This award-winning app lets you remember and recall anything that happens in your life. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, put everything into Evernote and watch as it all instantly synchronizes from your phone to the Web to your PC.

Zamp (coming soon to Android!) – Catered to business travelers, Zamp connects air warriors with one another in real time. Share tidbits about traveling experiences and learn key information – such as the shortest security lines and which airport restaurant is the best. This bonus app was highly anticipated at SXSW this year, and its Android release is soon to come.

What apps do you use at the gate? Tell us in the comments below!

Tags: Android Apps, Evernote, FlightView, FlightView Flight Tracker, Pulse News Reader, Tango Video Calls, TuneIn Radio, Zamp

Categorised in: Android Advice, Apps Blog, Featured, News