Waze shows you the way (pictures)

Waze shows you more than just a flat map of streets and freeways. It gives you traffic alerts, average travel speeds, and even the locations of other Waze users on the road.

While in navigation mode, Waze shows you not only your next move, but also the following one so that you can be adequately prepared. Along the bottom, it gives you pertinent route data like ETA and distance.

Waze also lets you search for banks, gas stations, and other landmarks along your route.

What makes Waze so great is the participation of its user community. If you come upon an incident that you think other drivers should be notified about, you can easily tap the button on the bottom right to report it.

Thanks to other participating users, if you're about to come upon a traffic jam, accident, or other sort of incident on the road, Waze will give you a warning via pop-up alert within the app. From there, you can veer off course and let the app reroute or search for a new route altogether.

Before you start navigating, Waze gives you the option to check out alternate routes and even share routes with friends. The sharing option lets you send either your full route with your real-time position marked on it or just a location so your friends can meet you.

Hit the button on the left to bring up Waze's main menu, which is made up of a small pop-up window and large buttons. With this unattractive combination, you actually have to scroll to see all of the available functions. When it comes to interface design, Waze certainly has room for improvement.