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The summer's arrived, and you know what that means it's time to pack that sun screen, passport, a couple of changes of clothing and your best swim suit and head out to your favorite beach or city destination. What it also means, is bringing along your iGadget - and not just for snapping a few selfies with your friends once you're there. The truth is, for help with every aspect of your holiday, you need only look to the App Store.

How could iOS apps possibly be of any use when you're planning or enjoying a holiday? Well, you could use it to find a couch, host or hotel, or to research the best destinations. If you're the teenage gap year backpacker type, you could also download an app or two to help you fund and organize a low cost trip and

learn a couple of outdoor survival tips. That's not all. You might also use an app to find out about the best restaurants in your chosen destination, while a host of photography and video apps make it easy to document the best moments of your break for posterity. Or what about if you're in a foreign country and don't understand the language? That's fine, as there are also dedicated translator apps. In short, there are far too many great travel apps for us to be able to cover them all here but we thought we'd pick out a few that you might find indispensable.

The logical place to start is the apps with which to plan your summer vacation. You might download the Priceline.com app, for instance, to search for various mobile exclusive deals on hotels, flights and rental cars. It's a similar situation with the Expedia app that has been designed for both iPhone and iPad and allows you to book your hotel, flight, rental car and other activities. Of course, there are some apps in this category that cater for more specific needs. Let's imagine, for example, that you urgently need a hotel tonight and everywhere seems fully booked. What to do? Well, you could just download the Hotel Tonight app that brings you last minute deals on the best accommodation. You'll know such accommodation is the best because the hotels are vetted by the site team, with customer support also available on a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week basis. Or, if it's airfares that you need, there's no better way to save money than with the Hopper Airfare Predictions app. This app analyzes billions of flight prices every day, and in so doing, learns to reliably predict price changes. It monitors prices and lets you know, via an alert, when you should purchase your desired airfare. Savings of up to 40% are possible with this intelligent app.

By priceline.com

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6,

and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Expedia, Inc.

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6,

and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Hotel Tonight Inc

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Hopper

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By LoungeBuddy Inc

Category: Travel Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

By InnovationBox

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

By Wanderu, Inc.

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By American Airlines

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By YELLOWPAGES.COM LLC

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

iOS apps don't stop being useful once you get to the airport, as evidenced by the LoungeBuddy app that allows you to browse a given airport's lounges so that you can make the most of the time spent waiting for your flight. There are also apps that give you real time information on the status of your flight, such as the Flight - Live Status & Weather app from InnovationBox. Don't forget that airlines often have their own fullyfeatured apps, including Fly Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines to name a few. Once you touch down, of course, you'll need to be able to swiftly get around town, which is where an app like Wanderu comes in useful for comparing and booking bus and train travel deals to more than 2,000 North American cities. Alternatively, you might be travelling in a car, and therefore appreciate the Gas Guru app's ability to find the cheapest gas prices near you, wherever you are. So, you've found the most competitive prices on the trains, buses, taxis and/or gas that you need, but there's one other massive question that you need to ask yourself: where do you actually want to go? Even if your chosen destination has plenty of attractions and

activities on tap, it would be useful to have a convenient means of knowing exactly what they are at any one time. 

It's just as well, then, that the App Store offers so many apps specifically designed to give you the  crucial information that you require on the hottest destinations. Heading to San Francisco? No problem just download the San Francisco Magazine or Where San Francisco. Or maybe you're in New York and want to keep up with the latest news as you stalk the sidewalks? In that case, you might download the NBC New

York app, with its push alerts that inform you of breaking stories.

There's so much more that you can do on your holiday that the App Store can lend a helping hand with. One time-honored app for those wanting to determine the best restaurants in the vicinity is TripAdvisor, which also just happens to be another great source of hotel and flight information. Not only does this app - the most popular travel app on the planet feature millions of traveler reviews, but many users also share photos of their experiences, while the included maps make it easier for you to find your culinary destination. Restaurant and food reviews can also be found on the Urbanspoon app, with reservations able to be made through the app

at any Open Table in the US or Canada. More than a million restaurants are represented in this app, through which you can compare food choices by rating, distance and cuisine. You can even sort and map restaurants

by popularity or distance within the app's restaurant directory, in addition to simply browsing menus and photos.

By BlueToad, Inc.

Category: Lifestyle

Requires iOS 5.1 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

By Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd.

Category: Food & Drink

Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

By NBCUniversal Media, LLC

Category: News

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Magzter Inc.

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 6.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Restaurants

By TripAdvisor LLC

Category: Travel

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By MAKE A

Category: Photo & Video

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

By Apple

Category: Photo & Video

Requires iOS 8.3 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Google, Inc.

Category: Photo & Video

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Instagram, Inc.

Category: Photo & Video

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

By Vine Labs, Inc.

Category: Entertainment

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.

Another thing that you can expect to do a lot of on your break is taking photos of you, your friends and the major tourist attractions. While it's true that the standard Camera app is perfectly good for this, with some basic editing functions available in Photos, there are still many other fine apps out there for really making your vacation snaps dazzle. These include COVER - Photo Editor and the everdependable Instagram, with its free customdesigned filters.

You might fancy recording a few videos on your vacation too, of course, and the App Store can again give you plenty of ways to share them and transform them into something special. Apple's own iMovie app comes with an extension that allows you to easily enhance your video clips, with a video filter, animated title and soundtrack among the things that can be added to any one piece of footage. When the time comes that you

would like to broadcast your video to the world, the YouTube and Vine apps will serve you nicely.

While there's no question that iOS apps have done much to make our summer vacations more fun, much the same could be said of many other aspects of the Apple experience and consumer technology in general it isn't just about the App Store. Recent improvements to the iPhone's camera lens, for instance, help you to take photos with even more crystal-clear and realistic detail, while the longer battery life offered by some of very latest gadgets is helping to avoid those awkward rushes back to the hotel for a charger.

There are even devices these days that help you to track down lost or stolen luggage. In short, if there's a way in which a little of the stress associated with a vacation can be removed and replaced with a bit more bare-knuckle excitement, it is sure to exist somewhere among the wealth of commercially available consumer

technologies or software. Wherever you are heading this summer and irrespective of who you are doing it with, you should never forget to bring your iPhone or iPad with you and load it with the latest and greatest travel apps.