Review: iAudioguides
Score:
72%
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It’s not just applications and Java midlets that you can use on your Symbian phone. As they become more and more prevalent, ideas and attractions coming towards smartphones are getting very interesting. One of these is the iAudioguide series of MP3 city guides. While not specifically designed for Symbian smartphones, they are part of the target market. What you have here are a collection of MP3 files (available for free download) for a number of cities around the world (Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, London, Paris, Rome and Vienna).
Looking at the London guide (although others are similar), the electronic package comes with 18 MP3s, between 1.5 and 3MB, and a basic PDF map. Referring to this map you can match up the bundled MP3 files with locations in the city. This is great, because it means you plan your trip, unlike the other way around.
That’s because this isn’t a walking tour guide – where you start at one place and follow the instructions on a sound file and the pre planned route. Here you get to a point of interest (such as Piccadilly Circus, The London Eye or Regents Park) and then you would start listening to the iAudioguide MP3 file for that attraction.
The voice is a delightful male baritone, and it all sound very eloquent. You can certainly picture him doing serious voiceovers on Radio 4 documentaries or a look at Renaissance France for the Discovery Channel. The only fault in the presentation is that the audio clips are relatively short, of the order of three to four minutes at each location.
The content is good mix of trivia and historical fact, although there’s not a huge amount of it. I can see it making the difference between a normal day out and a great trip around a city that you are visiting. And that’s the beauty of the iAudioguides. Yes it is niche content, yes it’s not suitable for everyone, or even the mass market, but for people that it does work for, this is an invaluable download.
Ewan Spence, 28 April 2007
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at