Monday, July 26

Best Free Korean iPhone applications

Image from Kawanet Tech Blog
Deviating from life-pondering and going consumer reports here.

As an iPhone nerd, I've been loving having the iPhone for travel. I'm also hosting a bunch of awesome people in the next few weeks so I got to digging through the Korean apps that are most helpful/I use the most.

Unless noted, these are great for foreign travelers as they don't require internet (i.e. roaming charges) unless otherwise noted. My favs in no particular order:
  • Subway maps--  
    • BPMetro- Static map, route planner and gives estimated times and cost in won. Five stars.
    • Seoul Metro Lite- Static map, but can search for particular stops or nearby stop with GPS. There are many similar, but this allows you to pan in and out most easily of the ones I tried.
    • KorSubway Lite- static maps for Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan and Gwangju
  • Translators-- 
    • iTranslate (by Sonico GmbH) 
    • Language Translator (by Piet Jones)
    • both pretty decent, but have their quirks and troubles (left as in left hand or left behind?)
  • Phrasebooks-- 
    • Vovavox Korean Phrasebook
    • Lingopal Korean (great pickup lines)
    • Korean Essentials
  • Food-- 
    • Korean Food Dictionary (by O'ngo Food Communications) AWESOME APP with pics Korean and English, doesn't have all the foods I'd like but it's pretty helpful when you can't remember which jigae you liked that one time. I use it all the time.
  • Various Travel/location specific--
    • Travel in Korea: Seoul (/all)- I'm pretty sure these are government-designed apps. They have pretty good lists of cool places to check out. I've sused the Seoul (city) and Gyeonggi-do (surrounding province) versions, but if I recall they cover most of the provinces.
    • iKorea-awesome

Anyone want to pay me to review your English-based Korean iPhone apps?=) I'd love the chance to!

Vocab of the day:
Korean: iPhone = pronounced "I-Pohn-ee", yes iPony. I claim rights to whichever band first realizes this is an awesome name.
Military: POTS =Plain Old Telephone Service

No comments:

Post a Comment