Owning a cell phone has come to be regarded as a necessity in modern society, and with the great advances that have been made in smart phone technology; most of us rely on our phones to help us in an array of situations.

While most smart phone owners are acquainted with the helpfulness of features such as navigation apps and mobile broadband, many people have yet to discover the array of uses they may put their phones to in the event of a true emergency.

We have compiled a list of 21 things your phone can do in an emergency to shed light on this exciting and important realm of development:

1. Be an All-Purpose Emergency Kit
There are a plethora of apps that focus on a specific niche that will benefit you in an emergency, but a more comprehensive app can be more convenient and may help you feel more secure. Thankfully, the FEMA app has a little bit of everything. This app can guide you through comprehensive emergency preparation and help you remain safe and find shelter during an emergency, making it an ultimate multi-purpose tool.

2. Offer Medical Help
While nothing is a more definite way to assess your health than a visit to a doctor, iTriage will do in a pinch. This comprehensive app allows you to assess and research your symptoms; read about conditions, medications, and procedures; view important news in health; look for a variety of types of medical facilities; and book an appointment with speed and ease, making this app useful in both the smallest and more serious medical emergencies.

3. Outline Basic First Aid
Even when dealing with more straightforward emergency situations, a convenient, comprehensive, and readily available first aid guide can be a great help. Thankfully, apps like Army First Aid; Pocket First Aid and CPR; and the American Red Cross' First Aid app make just such guides available at the tips of your fingers. These apps offer detailed instructions and advice alongside various features that can help you through just about any emergency.

4. Give Emergency Personnel Your Information
While a simple photo ID will identify you to emergency personnel in the event that you cannot do so yourself, those helping you in an emergency situation often need more information than what can be found on your driver's license or passport. ICE Standard, an app that has both free and paid versions available, allows you to store the information that emergency personnel need in one convenient, clearly labeled place that you may make easily accessible.

5. Locate Family Members
While GPS tracking may have a bad reputation, the technology can be put to great use. GPS tracking can not only be used for everyday tasks, such as ensuring the safety of your young children or determining if your teenagers drive recklessly, but in more dire situations. Apps such as AT&T Family Map and Life360 can help you locate your loved ones, and even alert them to an emergency quickly and easily.

6. Detail Survival Tips
Whether you are commuting to work, traveling to another country, hiking for the day, or doing anything in between, an emergency situation can arise. While the risk of an emergency is often low, it is best to know how to handle such situations. In lieu of memorizing countless survival tips and techniques, apps such as SAS Survival Guide and Survival Pocket Ref offer you information on how to survive just about any emergency at the push of a button.

7. Identify Edible and Medicinal Plants
Though conversance in wild plant information may be viewed as an obsolete skill, it is not entirely useless in modern society. Whether you simply find yourself hungry while hiking or you become injured on a trek, you may wish you could discern edible and medicinal plants. Thankfully, apps such as Wild Edibles and Edible and Medicinal Plants can help you determine which plants around you make for safe sustenance or temporary medical relief.

8. Navigate a Car Crash
With roughly 10 million car crashes occurring yearly in the U.S., it is wise to be well-equipped to handle a car crash at all times. Fortunately, motor vehicle crash assistance apps are available to make managing this unfortunate situation as easy as possible. Apps like iWrecked allow you to store and access all pertinent information, send a report and access emergency resources with great ease and efficiency.

9. Help You Find Shelter
Apps like the American Red Cross: Shelter View and Network of Care Shelter Finder are great resources to ensure that you can always be safe. Whether your area experiences severe weather or a natural disaster, or you otherwise find yourself in unsafe position, these apps allow you to find shelters that fit your needs with great ease.

10. Alert You to an Emergency
While many programs that can help you during an emergency do their job well, one is generally better equipped to handle an emergency if they are also prepared for it. Thankfully, apps like Emergency Alert and Disaster Alert specialize in emergency preparedness. These apps can alert you to emergencies that may affect you, and can provide you with up-to-date information regarding the situation so that you can best prepare to stay safe.

11. Learning about Stars
If you are enthusiastic about stars and constellations Sky Map for iOS and Android is a great tool you can utilize to study celestial bodies. By simply pointing your phone’s camera at a star with the app open, you can get more information about that star.

12. Give Visitors Your Wi-Fi Info
Write down your Wi-Fi name and password, take a photo and easily share with your visitors when they visit.

13. Business Card Scanner
Get all your business cards out of your wallet and have them scanned with your phone camera. One cool app I use is the Cam Card scanner. It has a powerful OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature which extracts all the data from the card into the application.

Full report at: http://www.obiogo.com/21-cool-things-you-can-do-with-your-smartphone/