Nearest Locator is a mobile application that helps you find points of interest such as store, hospital, petrol station, restaurant, church, mosque, police station, near you giving you detailed information and directions about these locations. The simple user interface provides maps navigation with accurate and locally relevant data in both rural and urban parts of the world.
The app is available and functional in about 7 countries. You can get the app free on your Android, Nokia, Blackberry and Apple devices.
First Impressions
When an app is 5.8 MB like the Nearest Locator for iOS is, it has won the hearts of many iOS users. Being that we do like to manage our memory space. Even though that’s larger than the size of the app on Android (1.7MB), Nokia (0.19MB) and Blackberry (1MB) combined, still small enough not to threaten my space.
The update also includes the ability to rate points of interest and use voice search, plus improved discovery and searching functionality. Nearest locator has been updated for Android, Blackberry 10 and and Nokia X versions, and now iOS.
What I like most about the app – it’s new to me – is how it is native to iPhone (>_>Blackberry (BBM)). It is incredibly easy to use and the app runs smoothly, though it tends to restart itself if you happen to switch from other apps back to it. I never used map or location apps before but I might just start.
User Interface
Not to be banal, but the UI is pretty neat and intuitive, not to mention colourful. It looks really attractive.
On launching the app, you can set/refresh your location by drawing up your user menu from the top right corner of the app. There you can use a sliding menu to go through the suggested locations (around you, of course). Below that is the menu of the specific places the app can help you find.
You can also search for specific places using the search bar at the top of the screen.
The Experience
The Nearest Locator app gives a stress-free user experience. You have a choice among locating banks, bus stops, restaurants, hospitals, hotels and police stations. As at the time of writing this I was in Yaba, so naturally I looked for restaurants and Whitehouse was listed. My point is that, the list of places is very comprehensive. I searched for every possible location, no hiccups. And the search is pretty fast. Navigation and speed, check.
And after finding the place on the app, the app can give you map directions using the iPhone Google Maps.
The only problem I found with the app is that after drawing up the menu, there is no way to exit the menu without exiting the app. A little annoying because that means restarting the app.
The Nearest Locator app is the brainchild of Ayoola Ajebeku and his team; and it is an app I definitely recommend for navigating your environment, especially if you’re in Lagos.
If you’re reading this from an iOS device, you can download Nearest Locator for apple devices directly from here.
