Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation or IRCTC has come out with an Android app dedicated for mobile users to let them book tickets using their smartphones. It is a free to use app and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. It will work with Android smartphones running Android 4.1 and higher. Couple of months ago, IRCTC had launched an official app for the BlackBerry 10 platform.
The app requires your IRCTC login details to be used. Once verified, the app allows you to search for trains between your source and destination. Once you have finalised on that, you are taken to the next screen which will give you a list of trains between those stations and you can select a particular train by tapping on it. Tapping on your selected train will show you the availability. After selecting the right choices, you then proceed to book your tickets. It is quite a straight forward process and if you have booked a railway ticket online, you will feel right at home. Do note that tickets cannot be booked via the app from 8am to 12pm.
The home screen also gives you more menus such as My Booking, Cancel Ticket, My Profile and so on. But at the time of checking the app, we did not notice the web account being synced with the app, as there was nothing under Booking History. You can also cancel your booked tickets via the IRCTC Connect app and the app can also retain recently added passenger details. For first time users, IRCTC lets you register from the app itself and you also have a PDF explaining the IRCTC Connect app.
The app has been downloaded over 5000 times and of the 843 reviews up so far, the IRCTC Connect app has got an average rating of 4.3 / 5 which is pretty good considering the IRCTC website does not seem to garner much positive reviews.
