Review: Camo -- use your iPhone as a video camera

In yesterday's post, I explained the advantages (and disadvantages) of using an iPhone as a web cam, and I also explained how you can use the Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe to mount your iPhone so that it has a secure spot atop a monitor.  In today's follow-up post, I am reviewing Camo, software that lets your iPhone act as a web cam on a Mac or a PC.  I'll also compare Camo to a free alternative on the Mac: the Continuity Camera feature.

Starting Camo

Camo consists of two sets of software that work together.  On your iPhone, you simply launch the Camo app and then put your iPhone on the Belkin mount or in another location so that the camera on the back of the iPhone is looking at whatever you want on your web cam. 

Note that when you are using Camo, you won't actually see the screen on your iPhone because you will almost certainly be looking at the superior battery on the back of the iPhone.  (I say "almost certainly" because Camo gives you the option of selecting which camera to use, so you could opt to use the front-facing camera if that made sense for some specific use, but I suspect that use would be rare.)

On your Mac or PC, launch the Camo Studio software.  The very first time that you use Camo with a computer, you need to follow the on-screen instructions to pair your iPhone with the computer.  It is very simple, and basically involves scanning a QR code.  After that, if your iPhone is connected to a Mac with a cable, the Camo Studio software will automatically see the iPhone.  If your iPhone is connected to a PC with a cable, and if you are running iTunes on the PC, then the Camo Studio software should work the same way, although I didn't test that configuration.

In the alternative, you can skip the cable and just have your iPhone and your Mac or PC communicate via the same Wi-Fi network.  For this configuration, start the Camo app on the iPhone.  Then start the Camo Studio software on  your Mac or PC and click the button in the middle of the screen that says Connect a device.  Camo Studio will find your previously-paired iPhone in just a second or two.

The developer of Camo says that a cable connection can be better, but I've been using Wi-Fi for most of my video conferences for several weeks, and it has worked great.  The only downside I've experienced is that, very rarely, the video will pause for a second or two.  But I only notice that once out of dozens of uses, and it fixed itself quickly.  Having said that, I suppose if you don't have a good Wi-Fi connection, you may see worse results, so using the cable might be a superior option.

Using Camo Studio

Once the Camo Studio software is running and communicating with your iPhone, the software will take the video that it is capturing from your iPhone's camera and announce itself to other programs (such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams) as another camera called Camo Camera. In the following screenshot, Camo Studio is running on my PC, but the interface is virtually identical on the Mac.  There are lots of settings that you can change if you want to (more on that below), but you don't have to do so.

Now that Camo Studio is running on your computer, start your video conference software of choice—I've tested Camo Studio using both Zoom and Microsoft Teams—and select Camo Camera as your camera.  For example, in Microsoft Teams on my iMac, I see the following list.  Besides Camo Camera, my other choices include FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in), which is the camera that is part of my iMac, and Jeff iPhone 14 Pro Camera, which is the Continuity Camera feature that I will discuss below.

If Camo Camera was the camera that you used when you last used your video conferencing software, it should default to Camo Camera again the next time that you use the software.

Here is a screenshot from a video conference that I was attending in my office.  In this first picture, I was using a Logitech HD Pro C922 webcam.  I have pale skin in real life, but as you can see from my thumbnail photo in the top right, my skin seems to be even more pale with the Logitech camera.

Next, I clicked the three dots that say "More" in Microsoft Teams and I switched my camera to Camo Camera.  Thanks to the iPhone, my skin tone looked more natural, and the iPhone automatically slightly blurred items in my background, which also made the picture look better.

For more comparison photos, check out my review from yesterday of the Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe.

Why use Camo?

If you want to use your iPhone as a web cam on a PC, you need to use software like Camo.  I say "software like Camo" because I know that there are alternatives on the PC, but I have yet to come across one that gets great reviews.  Camo, on the other hand, gets very favorable reviews, and it has worked incredibly well for me.

If you want to use your iPhone as a web cam on a Mac, you don't need Camo.  You can instead use Continuity Camera.  Continuity Camera is better than Camo in some ways: it is free, and it starts automatically without having to first open a special program like Camo Studio.

But after using both for a few weeks, I prefer using Camo on a Mac.  First, I prefer to initially launch the Camo Studio software because that way I can see how I look on camera before I even start Zoom or Teams.

Second, there are lots of settings that you can adjust in Camo to adjust how you look.  For me, there is only one of them I typically change, but it is a nice one.  In the bottom left of Camo Studio, you can Zoom the camera.  I prefer having my face take up a little more space on the screen so that it is easier for other people to see me, so I keep it at 125%.  An advantage of zooming is that you can drag the rectangle at the bottom left of Camo Studio to determine which cropped area of the screen to use.  This makes it super easy to center your face within the image.

If you have a built-in camera on your display, or if you have a web cam sitting on your monitor that never moves, you probably already know exactly where you need to sit to remain in the center of the screen.  But when I put my iPhone in the Belkin mount to place it on top of my display, it always seems to be in a slightly different position than the last time.  But by taking about two seconds in Camo Studio to adjust the position of the crop area, I can quickly get my face in the best spot without having to fiddle with either the iPhone or Belkin mount.  This is quick and easy, and a bit advantage over Continuity Camera.

Other options available in Camo Studio, but not Continuity Camera, include the ability to apply templates to the image.  If you want your name and company logo below your face, or if you want to display your phone number or some other information, you can quickly create a template and then toggle that on or off.

You can also turn on or off the light used by a flash for the iPhone and you can adjust the percentage of the flash level.  It's much better to use natural light, of course, but it is nice to have the option to use the flashlight in a pinch if necessary.

I mentioned above that the iPhone automatically adds a nice, slight background blur.  If you want even more background blur, Camo Studio has a portrait mode feature that can make the background blur more pronounced.

You can make lots of adjustments to the picture quality: exposure, white balance, hue, saturation, etc. In my tests in lots of different lighting conditions, the iPhone did a great job adjusting this manually, so I saw no need to change anything.

Finally, Camo has lots of features that, to me, are just silly, but perhaps they would appeal to others.  For example, you can change your face to an Emoji face.  Or to a Jaguar.  Or you can put a moving virtual cat on your head.  My video conference use is just about 100% for professional purposes, and I don't need to be the next lawyer cat, but if you want to be more creative, you can do that with Camo Studio.

So in short, if you use a Mac, the advantage of Camo over Continuity Camera is that you have a lot more options.  Even though I only find a few of those options useful, I miss them quite a bit when I use Continuity Camera.

Pricing

You can use Camo for free and take advantage of most of its features.  To take advantage of all features, you need to pay either $5/month, $40/year, or $80 for a lifetime license.  Some of the key advantages of the paid version are:

• Use on more than one computer.
• Use 1080p instead of just 720p
• Use the Zoom, pan, and crop feature that I find very useful

You can see all of the differences described on this page.

Conclusion

Apple's Continuity Camera feature is great, in part because it is so simple.  Plus, it is free.  But if you use a PC or if you want more precise control, you should check out the free version of the Camo app to see if you prefer it.  It didn't take me long to figure out that I really like the Camo software, so I paid $40 to use the Pro features for a year.  If I don't see a better option this time next year, I will either pay for another year or just buy the lifetime version.

Click here to get the Camo app on the iPhone (free).

       

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In the News

What are the four apps that are so important to you that you put them in one of the four spots on your iPhone's dock?  For well over a decade, the dock on my iPhone has contained Calendar (mainly because I like seeing the date on the icon), Safari, Mail, and a Twitter app.  Note that I say a "Twitter app" and not "Twitter" because for a long time, there was no official Twitter app for the iPhone, but even after it was released, I have always vastly preferred the third-party apps.  Back in 2009, I wrote that the TwitterFon app was my favorite, but I noted that there were 23 other apps.  Some apps were better than others, but it was great seeing the variety of features and approaches.  I then switched to Twitterific for a long time (I considered it such an important app by 2014 that I called it one of the apps that has stood the test of time), and then switched to TweetBot, which became my all-time favorite.  Those apps stayed on the most prominent position on my iPhone's Dock (the far right) because I loved using those apps to keep up with news, technology, entertainment, and more so I wanted to have easy access.  For the past decade, I've read reports about Twitter being a great product that was poorly run, so when Elon Musk bought the company a few months ago, I was one of the few people who were optimistic that this might be a good thing that would result in lots of needed improvements.  To the contrary, his chaotic stewardship of the company has made it far worse than ever before.  It all culminated last week when Twitter made third-party clients stop working without even explaining what they were doing.  At first, there was no logical explanation for what happened other than a vague reference to violating API rules—which makes no sense because these apps have been around forever.  Yesterday, a week later, Twitter finally updated its developer agreement to ban third-party apps, as noted by Karissa Bell of Engadget.  I agree with what Jason Snell of Six Colors wrote about how clueless, classless, and cowardly Twitter's actions were.  The whole thing has really soured me on sticking with Twitter, which I find frustrating; for example, Twitter's own app doesn't operate the way that I want a Twitter client to work.  I've started using Mastodon (I'm at @jeffrichardson@mastodon.social if you want to follow me), but that service currently isn't nearly as good as the old Twitter for a number of reasons.  It's all very disappointing for the countless users of the great Twitter third-party clients like TweetBot and Twitterific.  Losing an app—heck, an entire category of apps—that you have loved to use for such a long time is depressing, and I'm just not sure that Twitter can ever come back from this.  And now, let's talk about the other news of note from the past week, which fortunately is far less depressing:

• I love the HomePod mini devices that I have in my house.  I and the other members of my family talk to it to trigger HomeKit actions, ask simple questions, and use it to share music with each other.  If other folks are around me, I typically use my AirPods Pro for music, but if I have the living room to myself, I prefer using my HopePod minis as a stereo pair.  But I know that lots of folks preferred the larger HomePod that Apple launched in 2018 and discontinued in 2021 because the larger one does a better job of filling an entire room with sound.  To the surprise of many, Apple resurrected the HomePod this week with a brand new model.  The full-size HomePod cost $299 when Apple discontinued it.  The new model also costs $299.  Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac does a good job of comparing the specs of the original HomePod, the new HomePod, and the HomePod mini.
• Chris Welch of The Verge got to hear a demo of the new HomePod and he concluded that it sounds very close to the original, but has some additional new features.
• In addition to unveiling the brand new HomePod this week, next week Apple will update all HomePod mini models to activate sensors that up until now had gone unused: an integrated temperature and humidity sensor, as Chance Miller of 9to5Mac explains.  I'll be interested to see how this works.
• Tim Hardwick of MacRumors explains one use: you can use the temperature and humidity sensor to trigger other HomeKit actions.
• iOS 16.3 will be released next week.  Sami Faihi of MacRumors provides a preview of what is coming.
• Apple's relatively new Advanced Data Protection feature ensures that data that you upload to iCloud stays secure from everyone, even Apple.  It takes a little time to activate, but once you have it running, it just works.  This feature rolled out with iOS 16.2 in the United States, but next week in iOS 16.3, it will work in all countries, as reported by Benjamin Mayo of 9to5Mac.
• If you ever have a need for a large amount of external storage for an iPad, Ankur Thakur of iDownloadBlog explains how to connect a flash drive, hard disk, SSD, or SD card.
• I know from personal experience that when you are in a hotel room, it can be difficult to use an Apple TV or HomePod in the room.  Malcolm Owen of Apple Insider offers advice for doing so.
• J.D. Biersdorfer of the New York Times offers tips for using the RAW mode on the iPhone to take better pictures—better in large part because you have more options for editing them later.
• Justin Meyers of Gadget Hacks provides tips for using the Contacts app on the iPhone, including taking advantage of new features.
• In a similar article, Meyers identifies iMessage features that you might not have known about.
• Thorin Klosowski of Wirecutter does a good job of explaining how passkeys will soon replace passwords and how you can take advantage of passkeys on an iPhone.
• Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal discusses 5G as a network technology.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac discusses the shows coming to Apple TV+ this Spring.
• And finally, Apple created a somewhat humorous video to show off the Action Mode feature on the iPhone 14 and how it can make video seem smooth even if you are shaking your hand a lot as you are taking video:

       

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Podcast episode 83: Highway Nightmares, Ultra Bullets, and Snowmobile Smash-Ups - Scary Friday the 13th Episode!

What should you do when you are driving on the Interstate and Apple Maps or Google Maps suddenly suggests that you exit the highway to take some small, local roads?  Brett Burney begins today's episode of the In the News podcast by explaining why he should have taken the road less traveled.  We then talk about getting up-to-date sports scores on your iPhone, using an Apple Watch Ultra to track bullets, and situations in which you should consider turning off crash detection on your iPhone and Apple Watch.  We also talk about using Apple Maps to find a parking spot and updating business information on Apple Maps. 

In our In the Know segment, Brett and I share some 1Password tips.  Brett explains how you can get 1Password to pay off what you owe on your current password manager if you switch to 1Passsword, and I provide tips for making it faster to get the information that you need out of 1Password.

Click here to listen to the audio podcast, or just use your podcast player of choice.  You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

       

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In the News

I hope that you have been having a Happy New Year so far this week.  One thing that we may start to see more of in the coming years is MagSafe wireless charging.  I saw that because, as Jason Cross of Macworld reports, Apple is sharing its Magsafe wireless charging technology with the Wireless Power Consortium, which maintains the Qi wireless charging standard.  The implication is that MagSafe will be used across the industry for future generations of Qi charging. I'm sure it will take some time to develop, but down the road, ths has the potential to make MagSafe-style charging more common and less expensive.  Hopefully, this will result in more, better charging options for iPhone owners.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• In an article on Law.com, Isha Marathe analyze how Apple's new Advanced Data Protection option for iCloud might complicate some e-discovery efforts in litigation.
• When the iPhone 14 Pro uses its always-on display, how much battery power does it drain?  Michael Potuck of 9to5 Mac reports on a study finding that it drains less than 1% of the battery per hour.  It's great to learn that it really doesn't make much of a difference on battery life.
• Amber Neely of AppleInsider reports on a story that went viral over the holidays. United Airlines lost a woman's luggage, but she was able to track it and locate it using an AirTag, which revealed that the luggage was not at a distribution center but instead, bizarrely, at an apartment complex.
• If you want a refresher on all things HomeKit, Bradley Chambers of 9to5Mac wrote a beginner's guide to HomeKit.
• Eli Blumenthall of CNet reports that, starting February 1, everyone who is a Delta SkyMiles member will get free Wi-Fi on Delta flights thanks to T-Mobile—even if T-Mobile is not your cellphone carrier.
• Zac Hall of 9to5Mac reports that one of the changes in the new Apple Watch models (Ultra, Series 8, and SE 2) is that they use their own internal GPS to determine their location, even when an iPhone is nearby.  Older models use the iPhone's GPS when possible to save battery life.
• Tom Goodwyn of iMore lists eight interesting new shows coming to Apple TV+ in 2023.
• Speaking of the future, will Apple release an AR/VR (augmented reality/virtual reality) headset in 2023?  All we have are rumors for now, but Wayne Ma of The Information provided a detailed report on what he thinks Apple has planned.  If you don't subscribe to The Information, you can read a summary of the article by Hartley Charlton of MacRumors.
• One of the newest iPhone accessories is an oven.  Mitchel Clark of The Verge reports that Samsung has a new oven called the Bespoke AI Oven that uses an internal camera to recognize certain foods and help you cook them.  You can also use your iPhone to watch a live stream of what is inside of your oven on your iPhone, set timers, and preheat the oven.
• Jennifer Tschida of AppAdvice picks the top 10 games that you can play on your Apple Watch.  In other news, there are apparently at least 10 games that you can play on your Apple Watch.
• During last week's episode of the In the News podcast, my co-host Brett revealed that his favorite Christmas present was an Ember Mug2 that his daughter got him—a coffee mug that keeps your beverage at a precise temperature, which you can set with your iPhone, for a very long time.  Andrew Orr of AppleInsider reports that Ember has unveiled an updated model of the travel version of that mug, the Ember Travel Mug 2+, which works with Apple's Find My app so that you can locate your mug and even make it play a noise so that you can find it.  I'd love to see more products with built-in Find My support.
• And finally, I just finished watching the second season of the show Slow Horses on Apple TV+ and it was excellent.  I loved the first season as well, and I think that the second season was even better.  Here is a very short video showing a short discussion about the show between two of the stars—Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden—which doesn't contain any spoilers for season 2 or season 1, but does give you a little of a sense of the show.  If you haven't watched this one yet, I recommend that you put it on your list.

       

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Review: Flighty -- advanced flight tracker (including TriptIt Pro comparison)

There have been times during my career as a lawyer when I needed to do a lot of airline travel.  Fortunately, those days have been behind me for a while, but even for more occasional travel, I still appreciate tools that improve the experience of airline travel.  One of my favorite such tools is TripIt, which I first reviewed a decade ago.  Even if you just use the free version of TripIt, it is a fantastic resource for managing all of a travel itinerary: flights, hotels, restaurants, car rentals, etc.  I reviewed TripIt Pro back in 2017, and it offers even more features, including useful and quick notification of airline cancellations and delays.  I consider the service so valuable that I have paid for it ($50/year) ever since then. 

Flighty is another travel app that I've heard good things about since it debuted in 2019, and the app received lots of buzz over the last few months because of its improved notification features that make the app even more useful on your lock screen or in the Dynamic Island at the top of the iPhone 14 Pro screen.  You can download the app for free, but as I explain below, you need to make an in-app purchase for the Pro version to take full advantage of what makes this app special.  The Pro version is $50/year, but you can also subscribe for just $5.99 a month through an in-app purchase, which means that you can choose to only pay for the app during the months that you are traveling.  There is also a $90 Flighty Pro annual plan for an entire family.  The rest of this review assumes that you are using the Pro version of Flighty.

I used both Flightly and TripIt Pro during recent trips to and from New York for the holidays.  No, I didn't fly Southwest and experience that disaster in late 2022, but I did have my return trip on a Delta flight canceled, so I was able to see how Flighty handles travel disruption.

Getting data into Flighty

TripIt is great because you can forward to plans@tript.com the booking confirmation email from your airline, hotel, etc., and TripIt will automatically decipher the key detail and create an itinerary for you.  I was delighted to learn that Flighty works with TripIt and quickly imported all of my current and past trips.  If you don't already use TripIt, you can configure Flighty to import that information from an email, or you can add trips manually.

Notably, Flighty does not keep track of hotels, restaurants, meetings, car rentals, etc.  Thus, Flighty does not in any way replace TriptIt as a service for managing itineraries.  Flighty's focus is only on your flights.

Once Flighty knows about your flights, you can see your upcoming flights in a list.

Flighty also shows you information about your historical flights.  You can see the information either in a list or in a fun "passport" mode.  It was interesting to learn that over the past decade that I've been putting data into TripIt, I've flown the equivalent of going around the world 7.6 times.

Flight information

When it is time to travel, the information that Flight provides is excellent, and better yet, the way that it presents the information is fantastic.

When I am waiting for my plane to arrive at an airport, I often find myself wondering where the plane is coming from and whether it is on-time.  Flighty provides this information for the past 25 hours, so you can start to see where your plane is—and whether or not it is on schedule—the day before you leave.  This is a great way to get an early indication if there may be a delay or other problem with your flight.

Flighty also gives you an incredible amount of detail about your plane flight.  The key information like flight number, gate, and scheduled/actual times is prominently displayed at the top.  But other information is included like weather forecasts, detailed information about the plane, a detailed timeline, your travel history on the same plane, etc.

 

 

The information that you can get from Flighty is more detailed than what you get from TripIt Pro, although both services provide you with the most important information.

Notifications

As I noted in my review of TripIt Pro, that service often sends you useful information in an email, such as a connection summary so that you can the gate where you are landing and the gate to which you need to travel for your connecting flight.  TripIt Pro also uses the iPhone's notification system to push certain information to you.  It works well.

But Flighty notifications are much better.  First, Flighty doesn't use email at all, which I consider a plus.  When I am traveling, I often receive a large number of emails while I am in the air, so an email from TripIt Pro can sometimes get lost among the other emails.  Also, it can be cumbersome to have to open the Mail app to see the information that TripIt Pro has sent to me. 

Flighty's notifications are all iPhone notifications: both traditional iPhone notifications and the new Live Activities notifications on the iPhone.  And these notifications typically contain more information than TripIt Pro's notification.  For example, when I landed in New York before Christmas, TripIt's traditional notification told me my gate of arrival and the baggage claim number, which is the most important information.  But Flighty's traditional notification also told me how long my taxi to the gate would be (which can sometimes be lengthy at an airport like LaGuardia) and told me how early I was arriving (nice to know if someone is meeting you at the airport).  Flighty's Live Activities notification provides even more information in numerical and graphical format, including a countdown timer until gate arrival.

Let's talk about those Live Activities notifications from Flighty.  They are amazing.  If you have an older iPhone, as soon as you turn on your screen, the Live Activities notification will provide you with the key information about your flight right on your lock screen.  If you are using a new iPhone 14 Pro with an always-on screen, you can clearly read that information even if the screen is dimmed.  Flighty is even smart enough to put things like your next gate number in a yellow box that is obvious even on a dimmed screen.

Better yet, if you are using an iPhone 14 Pro, the Live Activities information goes into the Dynamic Island.  Thus, while you are doing other things on your iPhone such as looking at email before you get on your plane, you can easily glance up and see key information such as how long before your plane leaves and the gate number.  Hold down your finger on the Dynamic Island and the notification will expand to show you even more information.

 

I really cannot emphasize enough how useful this multitasking feature is.  I love the ability to work on something else on my iPhone while always being able to glance up and see details on the upcoming flight.

It even works while you are on the plane.  During your flight, you can see how long you have until you land in the Live Activities notification in the Dynamic Island.  Hold down on the Dynamic Island for more information.

 

Live Activities also show up on your lock screen, so you can see them even if your iPhone doesn't support the Dynamic Island.

If you are connected to the plane's Wi-Fi system, this information is updated during your flight.  Better yet, for airlines such as Delta, you don't even have to pay for in-flight Wi-Fi to keep Flighty up-to-date.  Delta offers a free in-flight tier that lets you text message someone using the Messages app.  Because that service communicates with Apple's servers, and because those same Apple servers handle app notifications, If there is a change in your flight arrival time while you are in the air, Flighty's Live Activities notifications will update as well.  That's a nice feature.

It was interesting to see that both Flighty and TripIt Pro are excellent at providing updated information.  If something changes about your travel such as a gate change, both Flighty and TripIt Pro provided me with the update at the same time, and they did so before—sometimes long before—the airline's own app did so.

Both apps also notify you immediately if your flight is canceled.  I had originally planned to fly home from New York on December 26.  On the afternoon of December 25, after I had already checked-in for my flight and gotten my boarding pass, both Flighty and TripIt Pro simultaneously told me that my flight had been canceled.  In this circumstance, Delta also alerted me via text message at about the same time.  However, I have had situations in the past when TripIt Pro told me several minutes before I was alerted by my airline, and that extra time can be critical when you want to be among the first to book an alternative flight.  I presume that Flighty is similar to TripIt Pro in this regard because I suspect that they get their information from the same sources.

One can argue that perhaps Flighty gives you too much information in notifications.  For example, two days before one of my flights, I received a notification that my airplane was still an Airbus A220-100, but a different plane with a different tail number would be used.  At the time that I received that notification, that change didn't seem all that important to me.  That turned out to be the flight that was cancelled, but I have no idea if the tail number change had anything to do with the cancellation less than 24-hours later.

Free vs. pay

You can use Flighty for free without paying for a Pro subscription.  And if you do so, you can look up live information on flights for unlimited flights with no ads.

But you need to pay for the Pro subscription to get the standout features that make this app so special such as the amazing notifications, information on your plane's prior locations 25 hours before your flight, lock screen widgets that update live (the free version has limited refreshes), TripIt sync, email forwarding, etc.  If you are looking to check out Flight, my recommendation is that you don't pay much attention to the free version and instead just pay for one month of the Pro service.

Conclusion

I was incredibly impressed by the Flighty app.  It provided all of the key and latest information about my flights, just like TripIt Pro.  It also provided additional information not provided by TripIt Pro, some of which you might not use, but other information that is incredibly valuable such as the past few flights of your upcoming plane.  And best of all, the way that Flighty uses the iPhone's notification system is best-in-class, including the app's fantastic use of the Live Activities feature.  This makes Flighty a fantastic app because the information that you need is always and quickly accessible.  If you are using the iPhone, you can just glance at it.  If you are not using your iPhone, just glance at the lock screen.

Flighty doesn't replace the TripIt service because it doesn't seek to manage your entire itinerary.  But it does replace many of the best features of the TripIt Pro service.  If it wasn't for the fact that I already have a paid TripIt Pro yearly subscription, I would seriously consider using the free TripIt service and then paying for a monthly subscription to Flighty only during the months that I am traveling.

Having said that, it seems obvious that TripIt could update its TripIt Pro service to match the superior notification features provided by Flighty.  I hope that it does so soon.  For now, however, Flighty is the app that I recommend using for the best flight notifications on your iPhone.

Click here to get Flighty (free, but in-app purchase to enable Flighty Pro features).

       

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