Geocaching is a new outdoor activity that is fast becoming popular today. Geocaching is a fun activity that involves the use of global positioning devices or GPS to hunt for hidden caches. It will surely become more popular because of the introduction of affordable GPS devices in the market. There are also many geocaching applications in smartphone devices like iPhone and Android. Finding the top Android or iPhone apps for geocaching can be difficult. Knowing what basic features are necessary for geocaching will greatly help narrow down the vast number of choices available to clients.
The following applications are some of the best for geocaching both for Android and iPhone devices:
- GeoBeagle is a free Android application that can be used for geocaching. It was designed to store and update geocaches wirelessly with field notes and logs. Caches can be downloaded using bcaching.com or directly through importing gpx files.
- c:geo is one of the most popular Android geocaching applications around today. This is considered as the best offline Android geocache map app by many. Searching for geocaches and sorting via proximity is so simple with c:geo. Making field notes and logs are not complicated at all.
- CacheSense is a Blackberry geocaching app. It is the first app to be licensed to use the Geocaching API. CacheSense is now also available on Android devices. CacheSense has everything geocachers need. The responsiveness of New Zealand based Bruce at ZitaFarms, its developer, is much better than others. Development of new feature updates is significant and frequent.
- Geocaching from Groundspeak is the official geocaching application for Geocaching.com. This app is the most expensive paid geocaching app on the market. It costs almost double the cost of other apps in the market, some of which actually have better features than Geocaching. This app is most suitable for new geocachers because it is so well put-together.
- Neongeo is an excellent all around geocaching application. It is relatively more affordable than some of its competitors and is available for free for a 30 day trial period. Neongeo is well supported with frequent updates. It has social features like a ‘Follow Me’ button, which allows others access to a user’s location. The layout of the app is simple and the app itself is easy enough to use. An interesting feature of Neongeo is that when a cache to target is selected, a compass appears as an overlay on the map page. This is a useful function for those who do not want to use Google Navigation.
The applications above are just some of the most popular geocaching tools available in the market today. Before choosing a paid app for geocaching, it may be better to try free versions of the app first. It is also important to remember that not all features, no matter how cool they are, are important for geocaching. Simple apps that are easy to use may be preferable especially to beginners.