Top 5 apps for your summer holidays

As the summer sun lurks behind some clouds and the school holidays begin, people nationwide are starting to turn their attention to their summer holiday and the precious few days of R'n'R they've looked forward to all year long.

But alongside the suntan lotion and knotted hankies many of us will be packing our smartphones as we prepare to jet off to sunnier climes. And whether you love reading great books on the beach, want to find your way around a strange city, or simply learn the lingo; there are a host of great apps to make your summer holidays even simpler.

So here's our guide (in no particular order) to the best ones you should download before you jet off.

1. Word Lens

Available on: iPhone / iPad
Cost: Free (plus £5.99 in App charges for language pack)

Word Lens is a translation app that uses your device's built in camera to view printed words and translate them into another language in front of your very eyes. Just hover your camera over the text in question and the translation appears almost instantaneously maintaining the colour, font and design of the original text.

It's ideal for working out those tricky street signs and obscure menu choices and best of all, it can be used without the need for an Internet connection. Whilst the free app lets you tinker, the only downside is you'll need to buy language packs which cost £5.99 to put it to good use. At present only Spanish-to-English and English-to-Spanish packs are available but the developers promise us that more languages are on the way.

2. TripAdvisor

Available on: iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm
Cost: Free

The chances are that you've already checked out a review or two on TripAdvisor's cavernous website. From hotels to restaurants and local attractions to cheap flights, you can check out previous people's experiences for just about every aspect of your trip. Now thanks to their mobile app you can separate the good, the bad and the ugly on the move; which means you never have to stay in a bad hotel or eat in a terrible restaurant ever again. Best of all the app lets you write and upload your own reviews so you can do your bit to help future travellers too.

3. Postman

Available on: iPhone / iPad
Cost: £1.49 4

What do you do when you reach your destination? Unpack? Soak up the atmosphere? Take a siesta by the pool? Of course not, you send a postcard so that you can gloat about your trip to your friends who are stuck back in Blighty. But who can be bothered to wade through the corny 'wish you were here' catchphrases to find a postcard that probably won't arrive until after you've got home anyway? Enter Postman, the ideal app for holidaygoers who want to send postcards but don't want to leave the sun lounger. Postman allows you to take a picture and edit it to your heart's content before sending it as a postcard to your friends via Facebook, Twitter or email; and all for the same amount of money you would've spent on some strange looking foreign stamps.

4. Gowalla

Available on:iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Palm
Cost: Free

It might look like the popular location-based social networking site FourSquare, but Gowalla was built with the traveller in mind. Acting like something of a digital passport the app lets you collect stamps for taking trips and checking in at certain destinations. You can also upload pictures and comments on places that you’ve travelled to. These, alongside your check-ins, can then be automatically shared via Twitter and Facebook so that your friends and family back home can follow along with your journey.

5. TripIt

Available on: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry
Cost: Free (with ads), £1.99 (no ads)

TripIt is a simple, yet brilliant idea that collates all of your travel information in one easy to use app. From car hire confirmation letters to hotel booking references it replaces the need for all those pages of printed confirmations with a single, simple, easy to navigate travel itinerary and all in the palm of your hand. It's a bit like having your own personal secretary. But as well as automatically fetching confirmations from your email account, TripIt's travel organiser can also share itineraries at the touch of a button which saves a lot of time emailing individual travel details for group trips.