Apptitude: City tours guided by smartphone

For the summer travel season, apps on your smartphone should include some handy titles for navigating cities where you might be a stranger, or for discovering neighborhood haunts and planning walking tours.

TripAdvisor City Guides, from TripAdvisor L.L.C., comes in versions for Android, Apple, and other devices and provides free guides for major cities around the world. User reviews help with recommendations on hotels, restaurants and attractions.

The Philadelphia guide I downloaded featured just one self-guided walking tour: of the Art Museum area and Fairmount Park, including the "Rocky Steps" and Boathouse Row.

The guide lists attractions by neighborhood or "Best" in the city. And while you are out and about, you can write your own reviews.

Yahoo Time Traveler, free from Yahoo Inc., is for the iPhone. The name suggests science fiction; what it really does is plan short excursions to fit your available time, up to 10 hours.

Choose identifiable start and end points for your tour. In Philadelphia, for example, you could ask the app to create a five-hour tour that starts and ends at 30th Street Station. For me, that tour suggested stops at Logan Circle, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and the First Unitarian Church.

A three-hour sortie from Boston Common recommended walking the Public Garden and Beacon Hill.

Have 10 hours to spend in Paris between flights? No problem. Take in Notre Dame Cathedral, the Catacombs, the Eiffel Tower, and other sights.

Descriptions for each stop provide some history and links to local websites and to Yahoo Travel web entries on the attraction. Maps are one screen away, with directions by foot, by car, or by public transportation. Icons lead the way to restaurants, hotels, and other attractions.

If you like your tour, you can share it by Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail.

UpNext Maps, free from UpNext Inc. and Verizon Wireless for the iPhone, is an app that shows vivid 3D maps of 22 U.S. cities, with searches for dining, nightlife, shops, and local attractions. Looking for a drugstore in Center City? The map on the screen glows with results that show addresses, phone numbers, and Yelp reviews.

On the New York City map, with some practice, I could pinch and swipe the screen to virtually fly up Broadway. For some cities, including the Big Apple but not Philadelphia, the app shows where buses and trains are in real time. If you also have the VZ Navigator GPS app (free for 30 days, but about $5 a month after that), UpNext will link to it for turn-by-turn spoken directions.