Disclaimer: I was invited to try out a subscription to GPSmyCity in exchange for this review.
As a Silicon Valley tech alum, Jim Zhu has been a big-time traveler. Whenever he went somewhere new, he’d take a tour, be that one of those frequently stopping buses, or on a walk with a group. Given the obvious limitations of those choices, he set out to make a a tour-focused app that wasn’t restricted by seasons, time of day, or even days of the week.
Way back in 2007, when Apple — blech — gave the world a phone with native GPS capabilities, he began to make that idea a reality.
In 2008, Jim founded GPSmyCity, and just two years later, introduced the first GPSmyCity app. Nowadays, its coverage includes more than 1500 cities worldwide.
For a yearly subscription that costs $14.99-$20.99 — more features are unlocked with the higher cost subscription — you can get self-guided (more importantly, at one’s own pace) tours anywhere from Rome to Raleigh, and Trabzon to Tokyo.
On the subject of Tokyo, a city with which I’m quite familiar, I was tasked with trying out any tour.
First, I had to download an offline map of Tokyo. For those of you who are low on phone space, this is a bit of a commitment. Sure, you can delete it once your trip is done, but figure it’s going to be a few hundred megabytes. (Duh, Tokyo isn’t a single farm in the sticks)
Before getting into the nitty-gritty, here’s my “travel hack” of using maps while wandering: load up your directions in google maps, turn the volume up, shove in the pocket, then wander. My virtual navigator is only ever speaking Japanese — one, to keep me on my toes, two, because it’s the least irritating voice google maps has to offer. If I get lost, then I discover somewhere new. FOMO need not apply.
n.b. in China or the Republic of Korea, they have their own bloatware that render google maps useless. Seriously, download “baidu maps” or “AMap” and watch their caches soar to one gig in no time.
OK, back to GPSMyCity.
As I was milling about the Marunouchi exit of Tokyo station, I chose to do part of the Imperial Palace Tour.
Once the map had been downloaded, the tours quickly loaded up.
The first option I looked for after selecting the appropriate tour was to change the language. I couldn’t find that choice for the copy, nor for the voice assistant. The voice was…goofy. Clear, yes, but somewhat phony. On that note, the voice was different for the map navigating, and for the tourist attraction descriptions.
Even with my phone location being active — for sure it would have to be when using a map app — the voice assistant didn’t say much. When it did, it said “head in {insert cardinal direction here}.” That might help when the sun is out, and possibly if there were moss around, but not on that rainy afternoon. Not to mention, whereas there are Tokyo streets that are N-S and E-W, a lot of is a jumbled mess with many forks and side streets.
n.b. you can choose to get directions to your destination through google maps, too. However, I wanted to see what the native map interface was like.
Once I made it to my destination, the Otemon Gate — no, that should Ote Gate — I marked that fact in the app. The more you visit tourist spots in a particular city, the better a chance you have of becoming that city’s “mayor.” What does that earn you? Try it out for yourself!
I may not be the most likely user of GPSMyCity, but I will say that it is chock full of information on many of the cities it covers. Ironically, although I much prefer reading signs to staring at phones, if you’re all about apps, then you’d appreciate the breadth of facts GPSMyCity has in store.
With a subscription, you can even download the backgrounders for your next self-guided tour.
I can certainly see the value of having all of the tour info in one compact app, but I’m always about having multilingual functionality. Once that is improved upon, I could see using again in places where I have zero knowledge of where I was going. Being able to show a local a particular point of interest in a language he/she would understand (which also being in a language I get) would be a great benefit.
For Android downloads, try this link, and for downloads at that other company which I deign to mention again, try this link.
