What’s on Your iPhone?
The wonder of rubbing our smart-phones with a fingertip to do stuff has been upon us for several years now, as well as the glory of the App Store, a treasure trove of stuff that you can do in your browser with badly-written flash made into programs. As such, I thought I would consult you plebeians on what you feel is worthy to keep in your iPhone, and instruct you on the greatness of my own.
Or, in not seventy-six words, here’s the standouts on the iPhone I keep coming back to.
Pandora: Streaming internet radio of pretty much every genre imaginable over 3G. This is why I don’t listen to radio anymore. This app has stayed on my front page since I acquired it, and I use it almost daily.
Now Playing: A listing of movie releases and DVD releases that is fully integrated with rotten tomatoes and imdb reviews as well as Netflix. It does trailers, too. The app will find you and show you all the nearby theaters, what’s there, and what’s worth watching. Or what to ignore at the theater and throw on Netflix. It’ll also throw it on Netflix for you.
Urban Spoon: There are many, many better restaurant finders on your iPhone (AroundMe and the Google Maps app to name two), but there’s something compelling about rolling the slots and taking what comes up as your dinner choice.
Kindle/Stanza: I have both, but which you use will probably depend on what you like. Stanza has the best selection of downloadable, free, e-books available for the iPhone. The Kindle app syncs with your Kindle and remembers your place across both devices. This is witchcraft and utterly delightful.
Facebook: Yeah, if you have an iPhone you probably already have this app, but it bears mentioning as it works really, really well. Often better than the site itself. How about that?
Lux Touch: I mentioned this in one of the very first things I wrote for the site, and it’s been on my phone getting playtime since then. The free version of this app is Risk with AI bots. I’ve never bought the full version because this is all I need. Controls perfectly, runs well, and it’s Risk. What more do you want?
RogueTouch: This was a dollar or some such amount when I got it. Now it runs for $3. Totally worth it. It’s Rogue, the old-school dungeon crawl, on your phone, with a decent interface. Rogue has about fifty levels, and is in the “I hate your family” level of difficulty. This means that you’ve got a lot of replay value if you enjoy this sort of thing. Also a ton of variety in loot and a fairly large number of baddies to face. Saves anywhere, but you die and it’s back to the beginning.
Field Runners: Field Runners is a $3 tower defense game. When it came out initially it was barely worth that. Since then they’ve added new units, two new maps, unlockable game modes, and a ton of game modes. It has a pause/save anywhere function that is delightful (and should be on every game app, period).
Words/Chess with Friends: Every multiplayer iPhone game should play like this. ALL of them. It’s pass and play (or play by e-mail, if you prefer that image) Chess/Scrabble/whatever else they come out with that I will totally buy on your phone. The beauty of this is that you can take a turn anywhere.
Frotz: This one is hard to recommend for everyone. Frotz is Stanza, only for text-based adventures. If you can get by the iPhone keyboard (it has some shortcuts to help), this is a treasure trove of nostalgia. If not, you’ll hate it. Potentially has unlimited playtime, but again, some of the text-games are…not good. Free, so worth a try.
AP News Feed: Another one I’ve spoken of before, but this is a great little tool. Customizable homepage with stories from your area and all over. Video and photo. Updates and will do push notifications. If you want mobile news this is probably your best bet.
Midomi/SoundHound: Two names, one app. SoundHound literally listens to music you play/sing/hum for it, then finds you a title and group. Not as much useful to me as simply witchcraft. I can now hear a song in passing, identify it (provided I can listen to or hum 15 seconds of the tune), then purchase it myself (Midomi is linked right into your iPhone purchases, because these guys aren’t idiots). You also get a full lyrics page and links to YouTube videos, as well as Pandora radio tie-ins and similar artists. Essentially this is Now Playing for your music, as it can work with all your other cool music apps and devices to provide an awesome experience. I really should use this more.
Anyway, while I have six pages of apps on my iPhone, these guys are the standouts, and most of them are totally free. As of last look everything but the games can be acquired without paying a dime, and at $3 a pop you’re out lunch at Five Guys if you buy everything here.
So what’s on your phone?
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Tags: apps, chess, iphone, movies, Music, Rogue, Scrabble, tower defense
January 27th, 2010 at 2:45 am
Getting the iPhone was the best thing I ever bought, I used to think it was a stupid toy but now I can’t see myself without it. Some of the apps I have are;
Tweetie: the best Twitter service.
Foxtel: record TV shows on the go.
Games; peggle, spider, doodle jump, flight control and words with friends
Random stuff: whatever I need, you never know what will come in handy
January 27th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Of the ones you mentioned, Now Playing, Stanza, Facebook, and Urban Spoon are the ones that are always on my iPhone. Urban Spoon could probably be ditched because I rarely use it, but it’s nice to have every now and then. Now Playing is essential as it not only keeps track of new releases to home video and theater, but also allows me to update my Netflix queue on the go.
Others that I use all the time are,,,
…NetNewsWire, which is sort of like your AP news wire. It’s basically an RSS reader that lets you capture news from any site you want…including Robot Panic!
But I’m constantly checking that one as it’s where I get all my news.
Sports Tap is great as it has live, up-to-the-minute sports updates on all the games going on in every sport. In fact, while Moe and I were driving to Hilden’s a couple weeks ago, we were able to stay updated on the Packers/Cardinals game not only through the text-based updates, but also a little picture of the field that shows where the ball is and where the first down marker is. Very cool.
Shazam is just like Soundhound.
Wikipanion is Wikipedia on-the-go. Very useful and I use it all the time during conversations with friends when we can’t remember all the details.
WordPress is awesome because it lets me update RobotPanic.com from my iPhone, complete with images, tagging, the works.
Tweetie is the best Twitter app I’ve used, and I’ve tried about a half dozen. It’s the only one on this list that isn’t free (I think it’s about $3). But it’s definitely the best of the bunch.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
First comment!
Spotify – Awesome streaming music app.
Flixster – Movie times and trailers.
Units – Unit conversion.
Echofon – Best twitter client I’ve used on the iPhone.
CW Gunner – so much fun recommend to everyone.
Trailguru – Use this for bike rides, plots your route on a map which you can then view on Google maps on your computer. Records lots of other statistics
Bloons TD – Love the flash based version years ago, the iPhone version is just as good.
Shazam -
That’s about it. Keep up the podcast…