Cool new Travel app...Polarsteps

 Anyone who knows me knows I like technology and what it can do for you. While dreaming about my "upcoming trip", still 7 months away, I started researching travel apps. Google Trips was always my go-to, it was wonderful and was discontinued last August. They replaced it with Google Travel, which no app for iPhone exists, and doesn't have the full functionality that Trips had. The perfect app doesn't seem to exist. For me, this perfection would be the ability to plan a route, put in my stops i.e. hotels, sites, or any other place I wish to see along the way. A singular place to capture the trip from planning, to execution and travel, then on to the reminiscing of the beautiful time I had. Another great feature would be the sharing of the trip. I'm traveling with my son, and to see his perspective of the trip, his photos, his stops, or sites he wishes to see. As my search continues for this perfection I have stumbled on Polarsteps. 

Polarsteps has both an iPhone and Android app, which is a plus. It also has a web interface to view from a full-size screen, some limitations apply. I will get more into this later. Their Getting Started documentation seems to have everything covered. So let's dig in!

Once an account is created and you are logged in you can create a new trip. The trip you create can be planned, currently going on, or a previous trip. The previous portions of trips will not have the detail that the planned or current one will have. So we have hit the new trip button and you are prompted with a cover photo, trip name, start/end date. 

When you reach your start time of the trip, the app will start tracking you, tagging the cities you are in. They note that for battery reservation, this is not a live tracking app. It is not constantly updating your location for others to see and track. It does it in bursts, the Mode can be changed from Ultra Light, Balanced, and High Accuracy, on Androids only.

By clicking the + we can add a step. What is a step you may ask, here is an excerpt from their wonderful documentation I mentioned earlier!

What are steps?

Steps are basically the locations you've visited and added to your trip. You can choose to add photos, text, and spots & activities to a step. A step in your trip functions as a recollection of a certain location with your personal experience in it. Steps can only be created within a trip. Steps can also be shared with your loved ones at home.  Check this article on how to do this.

Polarsteps automatically tracks your whereabouts after you've enabled the Travel Tracker of your trip. If you want to add text and photos to your trip you have to add them to your Steps. Your followers can comment on your Steps. 

I have clicked the New Step option, and I can name the step, it has automatically date/timestamped it and I can upload photos, write a quick What have you been up to? or add top spots or activities I did at this step. Their brief description is restaurants, campsites, museums. I can then save the draft or publish it. So for the sake of my July trip, I have prebuilt it, populating the cities I will be staying overnight in, and selected Car as the transportation method.

This brings me to the next feature, Transportation. When you have a start point and another step, you need to get from A to B. They have you covered with some suggested ways to get there with the estimated times for travel. So for the portion of my upcoming trip from El Paso to Las Cruces, it shows walking to the Bus stop, and a couple different buses going that direction. It gives the option for planes, taxis, and cars with the last resort of Free as a bird (I'll take my own path). 

When the planning is complete and the trip is saved you get a count down to the nights until my trip. You also have the options to share it with friends and family. It will also show you the duration of your trip. 

Everything I have talked about was done from the app on an Android phone. As mentioned earlier the website has some limitations, but it also has some other features. You cannot edit a trips stop from the website. You are prompted with a pop-up requesting you download the app.

One thing I have noticed if you create the trip from the website you can go back and edit it. Playing around on the site, I went back and put in some of my past vacations, city to city and it quickly totaled the miles and showed the countries I have visited on the trip. This was the Paris and London trip Kristen and I made over New Years' of 2019-20.

And our Italy trip, I took a little more time, uploaded some photos.

I believe though that the feature that has me the most excited is the option to create a book of your trip. After selecting Travel Book you are prompted to select the Trip and then it starts creating, you can go back and edit it afterward, changing the order of photos and removing some.

One feature they do not have is the ability to co-travel and use the app, however, I found the following.

Can I travel together on Polarsteps or tag someone in my trip? 

It is not possible to tag a friend in your Polarsteps trip or to share your trip with another Polarsteps user. This feature is written on our ideas list in capital letters though. 'Cause traveling together is double the fun, right?! 

Over the weekend I created a test trip, to just see. It was from work Friday, to drill Sat/Sun, then back to work Monday. Has a wireframe of the path, shows how many miles, and the furthest I was away from home, line of sight.

One neat thing I noticed is it is showing the current conditions at the time of pic, for example below Cloudy and 35°.

It has my interests peaked, just remembering to use it at every stop is going to be the challenge. I have been using this on my Android. When my son downloaded it on his iPhone he was prompted to import photos and when he did, it created some trips from the photos he had in his library.