The Black Friday shopping experience can be rocky if you’re not prepared, but having a trusty smart phone in tow will make the day a lot easier. With the right apps installed this is easier than ever. Here are five free Android apps to make this year’s Black Friday the best yet.
TIPS AND TRICKS
8 Apps for the Best Black Friday Ever
1
Waze Social GPS,
Maps & Traffic
Fighting crowds in the stores is bad enough, but slogging through a traffic jam on the road is even worse. So take a ride with Waze, a GPS app with a twist. Using your speed to gauge traffic flow, your phone sends information about traffic conditions back to Waze. Combining that information with data gathered by millions of other Waze users you’ll get an accurate picture of traffic conditions along your route. You can report accidents and hazards you spot, and find cheap gas along the way. The interface is easy to navigate and includes full turn-by-turn voice directions.
2
Route Tracer
A heavy day of shopping can mean multiple stops and even some back and forth as you hunt for the best deals. If you’re in a part of town you’re not very familiar with, it can be difficult to retrace your steps later. Good news: Route Tracer can do it for you. Just activate Route Tracer when you first hop in the car and it tracks your route using your phone’s GPS and saves it to a map. The free app offers statistics on how far and how fast (or slow) you’ve driven, and more importantly, it lets you save your routes in case you want to hit the stores again when the December holiday season looms.
3
Listonic Handy
Shopping List
Shopping list apps are legion, but the Listonic list maker stands out because it gets your family in on the action. Start by filling out your shopping list either through the app or the Listonic site. Either way you do it, both versions of the list are kept in sync and up to date. Other members of the family can then write their own wish lists and share them with you. If they want to make a change, they can simply update their own lists without having to pepper you with requests. You can sort items based on store or aisle within each store, keep track of prices, and even use your voice to add new items to the list instead of having to type.
4
PassWallet
If you’re a frequent shopper, chances are your wallet is stuffed with loyalty cards and other pieces of plastic that identify you as a frequent buyer. Offload all of that to PassWallet, which keeps track of your loyalty cards in digital form, giving you easy access to your rewards without cluttering up your pockets. A map view offers a birds’-eye perspective of where you can find locations that accept those cards. PassWallet also does double duty, letting you store related items, including gift cards, coupons, and even concert tickets and airline boarding passes directly in the app, further reducing your clutter.
5
Digital Receipts
Even the most careful shopper sometimes has to return an item, and if you don’t have the receipt you could be out of luck. Enter Digital Receipts, an app that does exactly what its name promises, letting you turn those annoying scraps of paper into clear, digital versions. Just snap a photo of each receipt—you can even stitch together multiple images when a receipt is especially long—and create a digital archive of where your shopping adventures took you. At stores that support NFC technology, you can even get your receipt beamed directly to your phone by using the Touch-and-Go feature. Digital Receipts will help you stay organized despite the holiday clutter because it lets you search old receipts by the name of the store, the time and date when you did your shopping, and the items you purchased.
6
EasilyDo Smart Assistant
A stress-free holiday season starts with a smart personal assistant at your side. Use EasilyDo to quickly RSVP to all your holiday events and parties from Evite and Facebook and get easy access to your tickets for shows and concerts, too. You can also stop worrying about those gifts arriving on time—EasilyDo automatically tracks shipments for all your online purchases. If you want to get away from it all, EasilyDo surfaces your boarding passes, flight alerts and more at the right time so you don't have to search. The app seamlessly syncs all these events to your calendar, so you never double-book or forget an important gathering. You'll even be notified when it's time to leave and get tips for nearby parking so you can arrive fashionably on-time.
7
Skitch by Evernote
Sometimes a wish list doesn’t cut it. What you need is a wish photo album, complete with annotations and markups that show you, in pictures, exactly what to buy. Skitch fits this bill perfectly, letting you load its database with photos gathered from the web or shot with your camera. You then annotate these images with freehand scribbles, extra text, highlights, or just about anything else. In the end, you don’t just have a printed list of things to purchase; you have a photo-essay that ensures you don’t get the wrong color shirt or the action figure without the kung fu grip.
8
Soonr Scribble
You’re on the move on Black Friday, and your phone is outfitted with a hodgepodge of wishlists, emailed photographs of must-have items, and quick scribbles. There’s no time to organize it now, but you can keep tabs on it all as you go by turning those files into documents that you can freely annotate and share. Whether you’ve got a simple image file or a detailed spreadsheet, Soonr Scribble lets you add your thoughts via freehand drawings, highlights, and illustrations, then share the edited files with other members of the family. It’s a great on-the-go solution for making sure you get the right notes attached to the right lists.
Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. All other brand, product, service names and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Screen images simulated. Appearance and actual performance of device may vary. The above content is provided for information purposes only. All information included herein is subject to change without notice. Samsung Electronics is not responsible for any direct or indirect damages, arising from or related to use or reliance of the above content.
