When it comes to mobile travel apps, it’s a buyer’s market at the junkyard. There is not shortage of half-baked, vaguely useful apps that you may use once or twice then forget they existed.

So many location-based apps that suggest attractions close to you have incomplete and often outdated databases. Place-specific guides also tend to be limited, often listing the most obvious attractions.

An app like ProGuides has useful general information about a place, but like so many travel apps, it’s an abridged Lonely Planet in mobile form.

So it was a rare pleasure to test out a travel app that really gets mobility and all its possibilities: location, user-generated content, navigation, and augmented reality.

Disclosure: mTrip offered me a free iPhone app for review. The app sells for $5.99 in Apple’s App Store.

First of all, mTrip is not for every traveler. Because its city-specific guides are so complete, it may feel like cheating for more adventurous types who like getting lost in strange new places.

What sets mTrip apart is the itinerary advisor. The app asks you what kind of attractions interest you by using sliders. For example, I can tell it to suggest lots of parks and museums, but go easy on the religious sites. I then punch in the number of days I’ll be in the city, and it creates a customized itinerary for me. Ingeniously, it can organize the itinerary based on your starting position (like your hotel) and

by distance to minimize walking times. You can also specify the intensity of the itinerary, that is, how many attractions it should cram into one day. As such, mTrip acts like a tour planner without the large groups and cheesy T-shirts. You also have the freedom to change the itinerary anytime.

I tested the app for New York City, and the list of attractions, shops, bars and restaurants is impressive. mTrip gets its content from Germany-based Falk CIS, a firm specializing in mobile navigation and travel maps.

Users can also add new places and rate them.

The app also has an Augmented Reality function which I didn’t get to test, as I was neither in New York and don’t have the iPhone 4 or 3GS with the required video camera.

In all, mTrip is ideal for the traveler who likes to know where he’s going but would like to lose the bulky guidebook. Independent travelers who wear T-shirts with “Losers plan it” written in the Lonely Planet logo will find it an electronic babysitter.

The app is currently available for 17 major world cities.

Another reason I like mTrip: they are based in my hometown of Montreal.

Further reading:
Review: mTrip iPhone app uses augmented reality (AP)