True Explorer by santronix is another great title from yet another developer in the DVLUP crowd. True Explorer is a very low power consuming mapping program for locating and tracking your movements. As a cyclist, I’ve tried quite a few of the “mapping” options available for my Nokia Lumia 925, but in my quest to find something a bit different continued, making True Explorer a perfect fit for my next adventure.
The mapping functions are great. The locating service took only a few seconds to find me. The map offered street view, satellite view, global view and terrain view options. These can be toggled by simply selecting the icon to the left of the map for the view you would like to have.
As I said, the location services found me in seconds. It gave me my location, my address, and the latitude and longitude of my location. Checking it against a ‘real GPS’ revealed how close it really was – and it was darn near perfect. The last little piece of the my location menu was the addition that really made this the must have mapping App for my cycling journeys. The Send SOS SMS button…
This simple little addition to the App now made me feel like I could ride safely and not be concerned with how I was going to call someone if I encountered a crash. In just seconds, I programmed in an emergency contact from my address book, set a message to send if I fell and couldn’t use my phone to call. As I said, a brilliant addition to this App.
The exercise section of the App is obviously aimed at running, not cycling, but the time and distance trackers worked perfectly with either activity. That said, I am now going to get to my one small complaint about the App… The in App advertising placement.
At the top of the screen, some of the App features place ads on top of other ads. I’m not sure if this is one of those things that is a coding error or just something that didn’t show up in testing, but for some really silly reason, it bugged me. That said, this is not a reason to avoid True Explorer at all. It’s simply a visual thing that I found to be a bit irritating. Nothing more. The other minor issue is that I haven’t found a way to change from km to miles in the App. Maybe a future version could include that for our US friends?
Comparing True Explorer to other ‘fitness mapping’ Apps really isn’t fair. True Explorer clocks in at 10MB installed on my Lumia 925. This makes a fully functional mapping App come in at a smaller size than the Amazon Kindle App, Adobe Reader, and even a clean install of moTweets for Twitter! That kind of functionality for that tiny amount of resources is ridiculous!
If you are an avid outdoors type, that loves walking, running or cycling, you need to check out True Explorer. If you trail hike, snow ski or do anything outdoors, True True Explorer should be on your Windows Phone. As with any newer App, watch for glitches and hang ups that may help the developer out and remember to give props for this great App in the Store after you try it. True Explorer is definitely worth the download and will be my cycling App of choice due to the compact size and great functionality.
Grab True Explorer by santronix from the Store today at this link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/true-explorer/2e2e29e6-8424-4ced-aad1-7216040c407d
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