Download: AA Breakdown & Traffic

Having the car break down in the middle of nowhere has long been a compelling reason for having a mobile phone. The trouble is, giving your location as 'the middle of nowhere, I think somewhere on the A515' isn't the most effective use of the communication.

The AA Breakdown & Traffic app solve this problem by giving you the information you need to get help. In fact it will even send this information itself while you call.

Read more: Car tech articles

Permissions seem reasonable; it wouldn't be much of a rescue app if it couldn't access the GPS built into the phone. It also request full network access, the abiality to read the phone state and identity, and automatically start at boot. The latter seems a little excessive at first but we imagine that you want an app like this to be ready as soon as possible when you need it.

You will need to enable your GPS before starting

Tapping the call button sends your location to the AA Call Centre and calls them from the phone.

The Roadwatch tool shows nearby traffic problems, and is certainly quicker than accessing the same tool on the AA website, especially as it uses the phones location automatically.

The Reminders tool helps keep you up to date with maintenance and similar jobs. We did have a problem with our HTC Desire C as the text box for the registration number wasn't tall enough to see the actual text when the onscreen keyboard was visible. Strangely this was the only time in the app that this problem occured.