With globalisation has come increased travelling and with increased travelling, the need for a good travel companion application on smartphones. A good travel companion can cut the workload of a frequent traveller by as much as 50%. This genre of applications is still in its infancy for the symbian 5th edition platform with only a couple of applications providing these features to symbian phones. One such application is PSILOC's World Traveller, which was released only this June 2nd for 5800s and other s60 fifth edition devices.

Installation

The basic version of World Traveller can be downloaded for free from PSILOC's official website here. PSILOC has a dedicated portal for its world traveller application with several screenshots and detailed documentation of the several features of the application. The installation file (.sisx) is around 1.2 MB and hence its not a good idea to download directly on to your mobile unless you are on an unlimited data plan. Download and installation is a pretty breezy process with a time span of around 40 s for the entire procedure over wi-fi.

Features

World Traveller has one of the best designed interfaces for any application on 5800 or any symbian 5th edition device for that matter. It blends in so perfectly with the default 5800 theme that at one instance its hard to believe that this is a third party application. The screenshots above should illustrate my point. The interface has that glossy look to it making it aesthetically appealing to the users. This is a major improvement compared to the previous version of world traveller.

World Traveller provides 5 day weather forecast for 2200 destinations across the globe and users can select the units of their choice for this forecast (Celsius or Fahrenheit). In addition to temperature and rainfall weather forecast also shows wind speed and pressure predictions.

The currency converter can simultaneously calculate equivalent amounts in four currencies to give you a complete price comparison in one shot. This is so handy for price comparison, more so during travelling when vendors try to dupe complacent foreigners who don't bother to give the price tag a second thought. I am so gonna use this on my next vacation or even for price comparison on Amazon UK and US websites for that mater.

There is a revolving globe showing day and night zones and one can tap on any point on the globe to know the present date and time in that place. The world clock can display four analog/digital clocks corresponding to different destinations simultaneously in a single screen which is rather not very impressive considering the fact that the default symbian world clock can simultaneously display six analog/display clocks along with day-night data (The asterisk indicate that the destination is in different day-night zone).

World Traveller is on an open platform making it possible for any third party developers to design and incorporate some travel features into world traveller. The plugin manager is designed exclusively for this feature. As of now the flight schedule and travel plan plugin are under development and can ne expected to be paid subscriptions.

Pros

1. One of the best designed user interfaces for any third party application
2. Support for third party plugins is very encouraging for other developers to design some plugins
3. Tha drag effect for navigating between different features brings that iPhone experience to 5800s

Cons

1. Not many plugins available at this moment

Verdict

World Traveller cannot really be compared to something like WorldMate yet because World Traveller is not fully functional yet. Worldmate offers live flight information for its users at an annual subscription of USD 29.99 and is one of the top traveller applications for mobile devices across every major platform. What remains to be seen is how PSILOC will price their flight info plugins for World Traveller and how it will compare with the competition. Till then, we cannot say much other than being totally bowled over by the glossy interface which is definitely one of the best interfaces for a third party application, in the league of Nimbuzz contact screen, reviewed here earlier.

P.S- Please check our blog tomorrow for exclusive offer on MyPhone Exceeding iPhone for your 5800s

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