Smart Phone / Dumb User

[Eagle]

My Verizon contract finally rolled over so I used the renewal to upgrade from my four (or six?) year old flip phone to a Samsung Galaxy SIII. I figured my wife and daughter both have smart phones, it was inappropriate for the guy who pays the bill to be the only one still in the telecommunications dark ages.

 

So now I have it (got it today) -- what do I do with it? What are some must-have apps for the 'Droid platform? Don't worry about music and entartainment apps -- I don't even listen to the radio in the Jeep when driving. I'm thinking more along the lines of what apps would be useful oriented toward driving, Jeeping, and shooting.

 

Also, while in the Verizon shop, I notived they are selling a Delphi vehicle information doohickey that plugs into an OBD-II port and broadcasts vehicle data that can be read by a smart phone or tablet. Has anyone used that? Is it worth the $249 they want for it? Would it tell me anything my Harbor Freight Tools code scanner won't tell me?

[Pete M]

well you can get tapatalk for your daily comancheclub fix. :thumbsup:

[mpace6a]

Ulysse Speedometer is a pretty cool gps speedo, with an optional HUD, pretty cool.

Theres a ton of different maps apps, trackers, etc, things like that.

Rob posted awhile back about an obd scanner app....don't remember what it was called, but it used a bluetooth plug in for the obd port under the dash.

 

As for shooting, I have a shooting ballistics calculator for long range shooting, and theres a reloading ballistics calculator as well, havent done much with it though... 

[Alexia]

Torque (Requires Bluetooth OBDII adapter)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torque&hl=en

 

OBDLink MX Bluetooth adapter - $150, but it works with OBDLink's software, Torque, DashCommand, and others. Basically one of the most open adapters out there.

http://www.scantool.net/obdlink-mx.html

ELM327 based OBDII bluetooth adapters can be bought from eBay for $10, but there are many people making and selling them. It may come out to be good or crap.

 

All these have over a super basic held hand scanner is expandability and what the software you use with them shows. It also depends some on the vehicle. The OBDII on my 1997 is slow and basically only shows gauge/sensor information. The newer PCM on my 2004 is quite fast over OBDII and can output more data at a time for accurate logging.

[Akula69]

I recommend 'Road Ninjia'

 

We don't travel as much as we used to, but when we did I had noticed (over time) that the Highway Safety folks had not been updating thier signs as much as they used to, and we would be driving down the highway wondering "Is there someplace to eat off this exit?"

 

It works pretty well, and has some downright funny words of wisdom (from the Ninjia's point of view) sometimes.

 

At work we use Shooter Ballistics Calculator for Android and iOS phones (in place of a handheld calculator). See it at: http://www.shooterapp.net/

[Automan2164]

torque OBD scanner - Free basic scan tool

Intellicast - Weather app with radar

Scanner Radio - Police/fire streaming scanner

 

The rest of mine are more or less entertainment apps.

 

Rob

[dakal]

i use waze for the road trips, and for everything else i use motion gps. motion has a road one but waze is better. waze is free, motion costs 1.99. well worth it. i have a 4s.

[92tanMJ]

X2 on torque OBD scanner and Waze. Also there's the weather.com app which I think is good. And then there's also the ebay, photobucket, amazon, facebook, ect apps lol