Car Throttle's Top 5 Motoring Apps For Petrolheads

Image courtesy: en.puro.com

These days everyone has a smartphone. Even your gran has probably flicked a few Angry Birds at ugly pigs in her time. But your phone need not just be for playing games and texting your mum; these 5 apps will ensure all your motoring needs are met at the tap of a touch screen.

1. Dynolicious Fusion by BunsenTech

Image courtesy: audizine.com

This is the ultimate motoring app. It combines "inputs from your iPhone's accelerometer, gyro, compass, and GPS to generate more accurate performance test results", allowing you to measure your 0-60 times as well as how long you run the quarter mile. And it's configurable allowing you to check out 0-100 or 1/8 mile should you wish. It even figures out your wheel horsepower and maximum G-force through corners and under braking, all of which can be shared through Dynolicious Connect - a kind of 'Facebook for cars' - allowing you to also follow others' cars and make new friends on the interwebz. Or more likely, argue with strangers...

Available on iOS, £8.99

2. Witness Driving by Snoring Dog

http://youtu.be/g4HS2fiG1J8

Snoring Dog describe this as 'a dash-cam for pennies', but even if you're not a penny you can live out your Russian Dashcam fantasies with this comprehensive app. Mount your phone to your windscreen and hit record, and the Witness app saves your journey. To save memory it works like an aeroplane black box by recording in chunks and overwriting old, useless footage as it goes. If it senses that you have an accident using your phone's inbuilt accelerometer it automatically emails the footage to your inbox. You can also manually save footage if, for example, you witness a lorry catapult sideways across your path. Judging by reviews we'd avoid the Android version which appears to be quite buggy; iOS reviews are mainly positive.

Available on iOS and Android, £0.69

3. TomTom U.K. and Ireland by TomTom

Image courtesy: computerbild.de

An expensive one, this, but worth the money as it is just like having a 'proper' sat nav in your phone for a fraction of the price. One of the perks of this app is that it downloads the maps to your phone so you don't need to waste precious data along your route. Another perk is that you get free map updates, which can happen daily thanks to the TomTom Map Share feature that allows users to share any changes to the roadways.

Available on iOS, £27.49 and Android, £24.99

4. F1 2013 Timing App by Soft Pauer

Image cortesy: androidpit.com

This one's for all you Formula 1 nerds out there, giving you access to all the real-time data the teams use on a race weekend. It has a ton of features including tyre compound information, DRS zones and live timings, but the coolest feature is a fully interactive 3D track position map that gives you a real time view of which driver is where for all F1 sessions. If the price is a little steep you can grab a free version which is limited to latest news updates and standings.

Available on iOS and Android, £19.99

5. Auto Trader Mobile by Auto Trader

Auto Trader is already a great procrastination tool, so why not stick it in your phone and take your dilly-dallying on the road? Bored waiting for the missus to try on that dress for the 12th time? Whip out this app and peruse the cars you could buy for the price of her Kurt Geigers. It actually has some cool features, like instantly calling sellers at the tap of a button as well as specific dealer searches if you 'know a guy' and want to see what he's got in stock. It could also be useful on the forecourt, as you can check if the car you're looking at is a good price compared to similar examples elsewhere.

Available on iOS and Android, Free

Any apps we should add to the list?