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Q: What are the best apps for living and travelling in China?
I'm techno-dumb and want to find user-friendly apps to make life here easier. Any suggestions?
9 years 12 weeks ago in Web & Technology - China
Okay, here's my list for iPhone of apps I use regularly. Some were free, some I paid for but those were no more than £1.50/$2 each.
Apple Maps actually works well in China but don't know if it covers buses. It does show metro/subway routes.
Autonavi if you drive. Free & you can download by city/province of all China including HK & Macau.
Metroman - covers ALL Chinese metro systems.
Waygo - visual translations of menus from Chinese into English using the camera.
KTDict C-E. Free offline dictionary
Wechat as mentioned above.
China Daily for keeping up with local propaganda, sorry I mean news!
Get a VPN in advance that you can use on PC/MacBook/Phone in advance.
City Weekend is okay for bar, restaurant & blogs/events in some big cities.
China Trains for searching for train times/prices.
For translation of text messages, etched I use Babelfish as it connects to Bing as well as Google so still works.
Didi taxi booking app but you do need to be able to use pinyin & recognise the characters for where you're going.
China air quality index so you can check how shit the pollution is outside!
If I think of anymore I'll update this. The above are what I use weekly.
baidu maps (百度地图）It's in Chinese but will give you very good directions and routes. I've found that others are not as accurate, when trying to use public transport.
Google maps and google translate are good. But they are banned.
If you want reliable maps in English I recommend HERE maps. Formally Nokia maps. A Nokia Lumina 720 has it for about 900 RMB. With this system you can also download the entire Chinese map so it works ok offline. But Nokia windows phones don't have a good Chinese translator. You need an iphone for that now. Lots of threads on here about good translation apps for the iphone.
If your traveling here I suggest you take two phones, on different platforms. I would go for an IPhone 4s ( about 2200 RMB new) and the above mentioned Nokia 720. I work on the idea that 2 phones for less than the price of 1 state of the art unit is best. You never know what will be banned next. It also gives you a backup, and double battery life. Even better if each phone has different service provider's SIM cards.
You need wechat on both phones as well. Seperate wechat accounts on each phone is a good idea. That way you can add people you like to one, and people you don't like to the other. Saves the embarassment of saying no to wechat requests.
The translate function in wechat works ok too.
Have a good trip 
Okay, here's my list for iPhone of apps I use regularly. Some were free, some I paid for but those were no more than £1.50/$2 each.
Apple Maps actually works well in China but don't know if it covers buses. It does show metro/subway routes.
Autonavi if you drive. Free & you can download by city/province of all China including HK & Macau.
Metroman - covers ALL Chinese metro systems.
Waygo - visual translations of menus from Chinese into English using the camera.
KTDict C-E. Free offline dictionary
Wechat as mentioned above.
China Daily for keeping up with local propaganda, sorry I mean news!
Get a VPN in advance that you can use on PC/MacBook/Phone in advance.
City Weekend is okay for bar, restaurant & blogs/events in some big cities.
China Trains for searching for train times/prices.
For translation of text messages, etched I use Babelfish as it connects to Bing as well as Google so still works.
Didi taxi booking app but you do need to be able to use pinyin & recognise the characters for where you're going.
China air quality index so you can check how shit the pollution is outside!
If I think of anymore I'll update this. The above are what I use weekly.
