TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy Review

by on September 23, 2010

Despite its attempts to appear as simple as possible, the Tube is complicated. Really complicated. It’s underground for a start, which never makes things simple. You’ve got lines that cross, merge, diverge, and – most importantly – get delayed or closed, which you often don’t know about until you get there.

Unless you’ve got TubeBuddy! It’s an app that simply lists the lines (in alphabetical order by default) and tells you what the service status is. For a quick glance, a green light (fashioned like the Tube map) shows if a line is fine, or it changes to read if there are big problems.

You can select a line for more information if there is a problem with it, which will often tell you what the alternatives are (such as if tickets are being accepted on buses as a replacement service). You can also bring up a live departure board for any line, which can be very handy for know where the next train is going if you’re on a line with multiple finishing points, or if you just want to know if you’ve got time to nip into McDonalds quickly.

It’s a shame the time for next departure is shown on the main screen, but it’s hardly a massive failure. Similarly, it’s surprising there’s no Tube map to refer to in the app. However, the ability to reorder the lines in the list as you like and to group them by status means that TubeBuddy gets a massive thumbs-up from us.

Download this app: TubeBuddy for BlackBerry

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