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Mall scene

Thanksgiving is a joyous time when Americans spend time with family, enjoy a wonderful meal and pause to give thanks for their blessings. Once the football is watched and the turkey is eaten however, it’s shopping time.

With Christmas fast approaching, the Friday after Thanksgiving here in the States is called Black Friday – where mobs of antsy shoppers fill stores and try to get the best discounts possible on their Christmas shopping lists.

Typically Black Friday shopping means hitting the mall or major department store early, and I mean early in the morning to secure your place in line. However, with your Lumia on you this year, you can load up a few apps to make sure your Black Friday goes smoothly.

Finding the right deal

With so many cool gadgets out this year, electronics are a major gift category this holiday season. Be sure to stay in the know about the latest prices and reviews of thousands of products with the Newegg app. Newegg may not be known too far outside the geek circles, but they are one of the web’s leading retailers of computers, electronics, home theater and more. They have quick service and fast shipping times.

Newegg

 Newegg screenshot

If you have a person on your list that’s into home improvement or anything that can be found from The Home Depot, you’ll be happy to know that The Home Depot has an official app that lets you search for products, read reviews and find your local store. For me, I’ve used the Home Depot app to do comparison-shopping while in other hardware stores (when Home Depot isn’t close by) to make sure I’m getting a decent price.

Home Depot Homescreen

 Home Depot Homescreen

To keep track of all the deals going on around you, consider Deal$, which is an aggregator that shows online retailers’ best prices. The sites that show up in the app include Woot, Slickdeals, FatWallet and others.

Deal$ 1

 Deal$ 2

Checking prices

Let’s say you’re in a retailer and you’re not sure if the price you’re looking at is comparable to other stores in the area? This is where ShopSavvy can save you real money. With ShopSavvy, you simply scan the barcode on the product and are served with product information and online prices that will help with your purchasing decision.

ShopSavvy barcode scan

 ShopSavvy item detail

RedLaser is another reader favorite for this type of scan and compare functionality.

For keeping an eye on a particular product price at Amazon or Newegg, a-z deal tracker will be your best friend. The app let’s you watch items you want and lets you know if/when they drop in price. You can even set an alert to give you a notice in case of a price drop and the app isn’t running. You can also research prices over time and read reviews.

a-z deal tracker screenshot

 a-z deal tracker item detail

Keeping it all together

It can be a chore to keep all your shopping lists together. If you need a little help, rely on Evernote. This amazing app can help you track all those you want to shop for and the potential gifts you’d like to buy.

Imagine you see a product in a store and you want to save it in your list of potential items to buy: snap a photo and store it in Evernote and you will always have it, along with geo-encoding so you know exactly where you snapped the photo.

Lastly, if you’re getting low on cash while you’re out and about and need to know where your nearest ATM is, rely upon MasterCard ATM Hunter. The app shows you your closest ATM without you needing to type in your location.

Which apps are you relying upon this Black Friday?

Image credit:  thisisbossi