Life It is an Augmented Reality app for Android that will change the way you look at your surroundings. By using information from the Google Places API, Life It makes it easy to find where your nearest Gym, ATM, Gas Station, Grocery Store and more is. It does this by overlapping it on to the view from your smartphone’s camera, giving you an idea of not only where it is in terms North, East, South or West, but also where it is in your local area. Life It makes it easy for those looking for a new type of store they haven’t visited before, or those having just moved into a new area. It’s an interesting concept and with simple, clean cut options to help you find what you need, Life It could be what you’ve been looking for.
Life It is a quick download from the Play Store, and once you’ve downloaded it, you’ll be given a somewhat lengthy introduction into what Life It has to offer, as well as how to use it.
With Life It, if you need to find something, you can scroll the exhaustive list of categories and choose what sort of radius you’re comfortable with. This is nice as it allows you to find things based on whether or not you’re willing to walk, or if you’ll be heading out in the car.
So here, I am looking for somewhere to grab some groceries. I fire up the camera and see what’s near me. I can move in a full 360-degree motion to see what’s all around me using Life It’s augmented reality software.
If I touch on one of these results a little overlay appears towards the bottom of the display with some more info.
You can gain even more info about the address by simply tapping into it. This gives you quick and simple info like a phone number and such.
You can then view a route in Google Maps and us Navigation to drive you there. It’s all nice and simple, and works really quite well. There’s also the ability to scan QR codes with Life It as well.
Life It is an Augmented Reality app, and sadly these are not new. I remember using an app just like this years ago on my old iPhone 3G. Of course, we’ve come a long way since then, and while Life It is essentially based on the same concept as older Augmented Reality apps it’s much faster, easier to use and actually useful. If you’re in need of something like Life It, then chances are that you just need to know where something is, and you don’t want to run around the houses finding what that is. With Life It you can choose from a pretty expansive list of categories, define a radius and then see whether it’s North of your location, or South-West. This makes Life It great for those that have lived in a particular place for years and years, as well as someone that’s just moved to a new area. Those having lived somewhere a long time will see something as 15Km North and thing “Oh, it must be near the Supermarket” or something similar, and for those new to the area, the relative directions will help people become familiar with the area.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – Easily one of the quickest Augmented Reality apps out there, Life It is quick, simple and to-the-point.
- Features (3.5/5) – Life It is definitely useful, and its no-nonsense approach is great, but this has been done a number of times before, and the use of Google Places API means that there’s nothing “extra” on offer from Life It.
- Theme (4/5) – Super-easy to use, the information you need is distilled from all sorts of info and you get the essentials, this is the only type of app I would use.
- Overall (4/5) – It’s not a fresh concept, and it’s not something new, but it’s quick, easy-to-use and genuinely helpful and is worth taking a look at.
Pros
- Very easy to use, there’s no jumping through hoops or anything like that, it just gives you the most-needed information in a nice and easy way to absorb it.
- Very quick, Life It is one of the quickest apps of its type and it’s so quick that it’s the only one of its kind I’ll use.
- Massive list of categories allows people to be specific about what they need, creating a less cluttered look at your surroundings.
- Great use of the compass and GPS inside of our smartphones, using our cameras to show us what’s where and then helping us get there.
Cons
- Introduction to the app is quite lengthy and didn’t need to be that long.
- This is not a new concept and apps like Wikitude have been around for years now.
Overall, Life It is an app that might not bring something radically new to the table, but brings a genuinely useful array of features to all sorts of users and does so with ease. Life It is one of the quickest and easiest apps to use of its kind and for that, it’s easy to recommend Life It to new users regardless of how long they might have lived in their area. It works with Google Places, so it should work all over the globe, too.