I'm sure most of use have experience being in an unfamiliar town or city, looking for somewhere decent to eat. I had a similar experience yesterday wandering around Nottingham looking for a decent Indian or Chinese.

But you don't have to worry about stuff like this if you happen to own an iPhone. There's a plethora of applications available on the App Store that utilise the iPhone's GPS to find a suitable restaurant based on your location and search preferences.

A particularly good one of these apps is 'Around Me', which lets you locate takeaways, restaurants, hotels, banks, pretty much anything you might require, then giving you in-depth information about the listing you've chosen.

Your other option of course is to use the phone's 3G capabilities and Google what you're looking for; something that was nearly impossible to do so quickly and easily before the mass distribution of smartphones. Whilst wandering around Nottingham for example, i performed a quick search using the terms 'Chinese takeaway Nottingham' & 'Indian Takeaway Nottingham' using the iPhones Safari browser. I immediately found several useful results, most of which allowed me to find a suitable takeaway and then access user reviews, recommendations and directions whilst on the go.

If you can't get your phone online, you could of course always try a local enquiry line, who should be able to give you suitable recommendations. So, for example I called up and asked for Nottingham takeaways and was given relevant and useful information by a local woman within minutes.

So you can always use your phone to find a good restaurant or takeaway one way or another, and this is just one of a thousand reasons why it's a good idea to get yourself a smartphone.