Mom's Taxi

This app acts like your own taxi meter to estimate what the taxi fare would be for any given drive you take. You click the START button to begin the fare and the STOP button to end it and see the tariff.

There are four dropdown menus at the top which can be reset before starting, should you wish to customize the billing rates. As is, the rate charged is a base fee of $3.00, plus $2.50 per mile (same as about $1.50/km.), a time charge of $.35 per minute, and a possible extra charge (which by default is set to $0).

There is also a button at the lower left which turns off the GPS location seeking if you just want to try out a route on the map. In this use, the mileage rate is increased by 40% to compensate for the time charge of an actual fare.

The app is designed to work with the phone's location settings switched on for both Use Satellites and Use Wireless. However establishing a satellite GPS connection requires a view of the sky, and even then may sometimes take up to five minutes to stabilize enough for the app to work properly.

You can check if a location has been found by opening the built-in Google maps application and checking of a blue triangle has yet appeared, which denotes a signal has been established.

After you are finished using the app, you should turn off the Use Satellite location setting as it uses more battery power.