Written Android App Review
Let’s face it: No mobile carrier is perfect, and most are far from it. Cell reception is no different. No matter what phone you have, it’s simply not much use without steady bars and a healthy digital breeze—so to speak. Next time you’re stuck in Dead Cell Nowhere, USA be sure to tap Open Signal Maps, by developer Staircase 3, to accurately pinpoint and improve your cell reception.
Concept and Functionality
Open Signal Maps provides a simple service that you’ve most likely been doing already. If you’ve ever walked around a room waving your phone in the air in a search of bars, then you’ll appreciate what the app has to offer. Open Signal Maps prowls the area nearby for cell towers and points you—via a nifty digital compass—toward. The idea is that reducing the distance between you and the source will improve signal strength. The app can use either WiFi or GPS to locate local towers, and it’s unbelievably accurate. If you’re ever in a pinch and need bars, Open Signal Maps allows you to locate and secure better reception.
Open Signal Maps
The app offers the aforementioned compass that will literally point you toward better bars, but it also provides a map for easy browsing. As if that’s not enough, you can also use Open Signal Maps to test your data connection’s speed, graph its strength over time, or track towers your phone has latched on to in recent memory. It’s a brilliant utility, and one that’s immensely useful to people who either live in a Low Bars Dead-Zone or are traveling through one. It’s worth noting that while walking—or speeding—toward the nearest tower will not always increase your cell reception, it is still worth a shot in most cases. And either way, Open Signal Maps’ excellent performance (the app was bug-free in my review) will help you do it.
Design and Layout
The most immediate thing about the app is its gunmetal grey coat and top-oriented tab browsing. I found the app extremely easy to navigate, as all the available features were only a few clicks away. In fact, almost everything about the app avoids menus. Speed tests, WiFi toggles, exporting graphs to Twitter and Facebook: All of it is a mere click away. This makes things unbelievably easy to use, and saves you time as you attempt to hunt down the nearest life-giving tower.
Overall Value
At the end of the day, Open Signal Maps is the kind of app you may not have known you needed, but can’t live without. It’s an indispensable utility when you’re stuck in a dead-zone, and an easy way to track your tower history when you’re not. Best of all, the app is free (and 100% functional). Open Signal Maps’ rock-solid design and easy to navigate interface make it the best cell tracker on the market, and a must-have utility for any Android phone.
Android Apps Review Details: Open Signal Maps app is free. This app requires Android 1.5 and up. You may download Open Signal Maps from the Android Market.
This Android app review, as well as the other Android app reviews for droid phones and droid tablets on this site, are brought to you by AndroidAppsReview.com.
