Localscope for iPhone adds tight navigation integration

I liked this 'where am I and what's around me?' app when I first looked at Localscope earlier this year, and it's only gotten better.

The latest version of this US$1.99 app adds integration with Magellan RoadMate, NavFree, Motion X GPS and Sygic. The app already pulls info from most of the other top navigation systems, including Navigon, TomTom and Waze.

It's one of the few apps that doesn't depend on Google for information. You can find nearby businesses using Bing, Foresquare, Twitter and Wikimapia. The app also supports augmented reality, which is nice when you are walking around. The camera activates, and the app superimposes your target on the live image. I don't recommend it when driving, of course.

Localscope provides a map and phone number for your target location, which you can share via email, SMS, Twitter or FaceBook.

I found a location I wanted to go to, effortlessly sent it to Navigon, and I was ready to go. Localscope knew what apps I had on my iPhone that it could send data to, so one click sent the data and opened my Navigon app and I was ready to drive off.

There are plenty of free apps that do similar tasks, but Localscope is ad-free, easy to use and sophisticated. It works anywhere in the world. It's a perfect candidate for Siri integration, if and when Apple gives 3rd parties what they need to make it work.

When you are typing a search request into Localscope on an iPhone 4S, you can enter the search using speech. That worked for several businesses I was looking for but it's only a taste of what the power of Siri would bring.

I continue to recommend Localscope. It supports 19 languages and is easily worth $1.99. The app is a 4.4 MB download and requires iOS4 or greater. There are some screenshots for your inspection below.