14 Great Apps That Will Never Leave My iPhone

It’s no secret that I’m heavily addicted to my iPhone. Come this month or next month – whenever Apple brings out the next generation iPhone with 32GB of storage – I’ll likely be getting it.

I have a lot of apps and I’m addicted to trying out new ones, too. Thought I’d share some of my current faves. I thought about doing a post with apps you should NEVER download (free or not), but what would be the point, really? (Thanks to @iphoneness for the promo code to Black Book, but it sucks.)

You can look at the end of this post for Related Posts, where I review other fave apps. But here’s a list of 14 apps that will likely never get deleted from my iPhone. Some are utilities, some are games. It’s a veritable cornucopia potpourri, if you will.

1. AppSniper. 99 cents. Sure, I regularly scope out the App Store on the iPhone, but those lists leave a lot to be desired. You get the featured apps, What’s Hot, the top 50 paid and free apps. But what about all the other apps that slip through the cracks?

AppSniper is your answer. Not only does it sync with the App server and show you ALL the new apps on a daily basis, it also shows you all the apps that are on sale. AND you can Snipe apps you’re interested in, but aren’t willing to pay full price for. Set it so that it alerts you whenever your “watched” apps drop down to a price point you can live with. I’ve found some great apps using AppSniper, and new apps often show up in AppSniper before they show up on the App Store.

 

There are similar apps, to be sure, but I say AppSniper is the best. Others don’t allow you to view all of the screenshots for apps.

2. IGN. FREE. IGN is one of the big boys when it comes to reviewing video games of all sorts. The IGN app lets you see their reviews, which are regularly updated. You can set your preferences to only show the platforms you’re interested in: XBox, Playstation, Wii, and most importantly for me, the iPhone.

I check it every other day or so to see if there are any cool iPhone games I haven’t discovered yet. The reviews are very detailed, and there are also quick-glance reviews with a numerical rating…with a top (theoretical) rating of 10.0.

My only gripe is that there are no screenshots, but I can live with it.

 

3. Glucose Buddy. Currently FREE. OK, maybe you’re not diabetic like I am. But if you ARE, this is a great app to track your blood sugar and insulin dosages. Very simple to use and it keeps me from having to write all my glucose readings down in a notebook.

Dial in your blood sugar, whether your reading is taken before breakfast or after dinner, etc., and also how much insulin you’re taking. Glucose Buddy automatically adds a timestamp (though you can edit the date and time if you’re adding older entries).

There’s a tab to view a graph of your sugar readings. You can also automatically sync all your data with GlucoseBuddy.com. Very cool. There are buttons to take screen grabs and email your data to your doctor.

It’s an early release, but again, it’s free and I look forward to updates. Very cool app for diabetics.

 

4. Twittelator Pro. $4.99. In the battle of the Twitter apps, Twittelator Pro is currently winning for me, and is the only Twitter app on my home screen. Tweetie used to be my favorite, and it’s still on my iPhone (because I’m waiting for a super-duper upgrade).

But as far as features go, my opinion is that Twittelator and Twitterrific are the current champs. Naturally, this is subject to change at a moment’s notice. What I’m really looking for is an iPhone equivalent of Tweetdeck, which allows me to create my own groups. (Yes, I’ve tried TweetStack, but it falls flat for me.)

If you like free and don’t mind ads, then there is a FREE version of Twittelator, too.

You’ve got your 3 basic “tabs” on the bottom toolbar: one for Friends, which shows all the people you follow, one for Mentions, which show all the tweets that @ your name, and one for Messages, which are DM’s. Then there’s a Settings tab (the only app that makes the Settings so accessible, by the way).

And the More tab, which gives you access to a ton of shit. From there you can sign into multiple Twitter accounts, Search (with saved previous searches), Subgroups (close to the group function on Tweetdeck), Trends (showing the most popular Tweet subjects at the moment), Favorites, etc.

Lots of features in this little app, plus “unread” numbers on the toolbar to show you how far behind you are on reading your Tweets. Well worth the money, if you ask me.

5. Tap Tap Revenge 2. FREE. No screenshots for this one because it’s a bitch to try to catch a screen grab when you’re playing this game. I’m new to the Tap Tap crowd, but am already highly addicted.

Basically? It’s Guitar Hero for your thumbs. Comes with a lot of tunes already, but you can download many more from within the game. Songs by a lot of unknowns (for me, anyway), but also big artists like Dave Matthews, Nine Inch Nails, All American Rejects, Coldplay, and more.

And if you buy the “themed” versions of Tap Tap (which currently include Coldplay, Dave Matthews, NIN) you can import those songs/themes into Tap Tap Revenge 2. 

There are various difficulty levels: Kids, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Extreme. I’m still on Easy, which is plenty challenging for me at the moment. GREAT fucking game. A must-download.

6. Trivial Pursuit. $4.99. If you’re hooked on trivia, this is a great version of the classic board game. 

When you open up the app, you get several options to play.

There’s a WiFi Multiplayer mode (haven’t tried it because you have to be on the same wifi network to play this way), Classic Mode (which emulates the classic wagon wheel game board), Pass ‘N Play mode (where you play the game with multiple players and literally pass the game back and forth between players).

Then there’s my favorite mode, which is Pursuit Mode. This is essentially the only mode worth playing solo. 25 levels of different game boards where you try to answer as many trivia questions as possible as you travel from one end of the board to the other.

You’ve got your 6 basic Trivial Pursuit categories: Entertainment, History, Science, Arts & Literature, Geography, and Sports & Leisure. Then there’s the Random category. Land on that and you get – surprise – a random category.

There are also STAR squares, which provide for some unique “power-ups.” One power-up gives you an extra 2 on your next die roll, another gives you a little extra time to answer the question. Very cool.

My only wish for this game is that they’d let you turn off the music, which gets kind of grating after, oh, 10 minutes or so.

7. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? $4.99. Another fun trivia game, this time based on a TV game show. It’s a fast play, fun when you have a few minutes available, and it’s complete with the lifelines we all know and love.

There’s also a LITE free version you can try before you buy. It’s really more a demo that lets you play up to the $2,000 question, but it gives you a taste of the game.

The full version boasts over 1,000 questions. 

 

Most of us are familiar with the game. Start out at the easy $100 question and work your way up the ladder by successfully answering questions until you get to the $1 Million question. To help you out, you get some lifelines.

One is Phone-A-Friend, which actually pulls random people from your phone contacts list and lets you “call them” for help. One is Ask-the-Audience, where you see what most of the invisible audience members say. Then there’s the Double-Dip, which lets you choose 2 out of the 4 possible answers for a question. And there’s the Ask-the-Expert lifeline, which unlocks when you successfully answer the $1,000 question.

All this help aside, I have yet to get to the $1 Million question, but I won’t stop trying.

8. PhotoGene. $2.99. By far, the best photo app in the App Store right now. It’s like having Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro for the photos on your iPhone.

Let’s face it, the iPhone (as is the case with most every cell phone) takes crappy photos. They’re fine in a pinch and don’t get me wrong, I use the camera all the time for uploading pointless pics to Twitpic. But PhotoGene makes those photos much better.

Many options here. The one I use most is the “Colors” tool, shown on the left-hand toolbar as a color wheel. Here you can auto-fix the contrast and brightness in photos, manually make adjustments, colorize, etc.

There’s also a Crop tool, a Rotate tool, an Effects tool, a Frame tool, etc. 

The cool thing is that you can either pull a photo from your iPhone’s Photo Album roll OR take a photo within PhotoGene itself and then edit that photo directly. After you’re finished doctoring your photo, you click the checkmark in the lower-left to save your photo to the photo roll (a new version, Photogene automatically maintains the original image).

VERY COOL APP and easily worth the $3.

9. Parking Lot. 99 cents. This is a classic game, more commonly known as Rush Hour. It’s a puzzle game. You start with your yellow car stuck in the middle of a parking lot and the object is to slide cars up and down and left and right until the EXIT is accessible for you to drive through.

That’s it. Lots of puzzles of varying difficulty. See if you can escape each parking lot with a minimum number of moves.

The two screenshots below show the same puzzle, at the beginning and the end.

 

10. Peggle. $4.99. PopCap games has been making amazing games for years. Bejeweled ring a bell? Yeah, they were the first to come up with the match-3 game, of which there are now about a bajillion versions on computers and mobile devices.

Peggle is another addicting game, yet very simple to play. Lots of levels and play options, but the gist of the game is that you try to eliminate all the orange pegs in the game, using only 10 balls.

Yeah, there are power-ups and chances to earn free balls. It’s kind of like Plinko on the Price is Right. You shoot a ball from the top and watch it bounce and ricochet off other balls, all the while gravity bringing the ball down, down, down, until it either escapes into the void at the bottom or your play bucket catches it (thus earning you another ball).

After every shot, all of the pegs you hit disappear to set the stage for your NEXT shot. If you eliminate all the orange pegs during the game, you win. If not, you have to try again in order to unlock the next level. It’s maddeningly fun.

Different colored pegs (such as purple and green) bring their own effects upon being hit. I’ll leave the surprises for you to find. But the built-in tutorial is great and shows you everything you need to know. And I LOVE what happens when your ball hits that last orange peg on the board.

11. Scrabble. $4.99. Another classic board game brought to the iPhone, and it’s a goodie. If you’ve played Scrabble on Facebook, you’re already very familiar with the UI.

In fact, you can play Scrabble with your Facebook friends, thanks to Facebook Connect.

 

Different modes and versions to play, along with a Best Word “cheat” at the bottom of your screen, which automatically calculates and places the best possible scoring word based on the current board.

12. Kindle. FREE, but the books cost money, of course. I don’t own a Kindle and it’ll be a long time before I decide to plop down over $300 for something I can already do with my iPhone. Thankfully, there’s no need, provided you can deal with reading on a relatively small screen. I’ve adapted quite well and have already read several novels on the Kindle app. (Right now, I’m reading Terry Brooks’ “Elves of Cintra”)

All sorts of options let you change the size of the text, even different color schemes so you can choose the one that’s easiest on your eyes. The text is very readable, though looking at pictures kind of sucks. And you can read either in portrait or landscape mode simply by turning the iPhone.

You still can’t purchase books WITHIN the app itself, but I expect that’ll change when OS 3.0 comes out for the iPhone in the next month or so. Instead you can either purchase books from the iPhone-friendly Kindle site on Amazon’s site, OR through Amazon.com on your computer. Tell Amazon you want it sent to your iPhone and the next time you fire up the Kindle app, your purchases are automatically downloaded.

The good thing is that if you DO have an actual Kindle you can sync between the two devices. Plus, the Kindle versions of books are tons cheaper than the physical hard copy versions. And if you ever decide to REdownload a book you’ve already purchased, you can do so free of charge. Amazon keeps track of everything you’ve bought already.

Great app. And until Amazon decides to bring down their ridiculous pricing on the Kindles, this is the way I’ll go.

13. DirecTV. FREE. Kind of a specialized app meant only for customers of DirecTV satellite service, this is a marvelous app that lets you record stuff to your DVR from anywhere.

You forgot to record tonight’s episode of Medium or Jon & Kate Plus 8? No worries. Fire up this app, search for any show you want (either by name or time/date), and you can easily record the show with a couple of clicks. More than one DVR in the house? No prob there, either. The ones in my house are labeled “Family Room” and “Bedroom” and I can easily record to either one (or both).

If you’re a DirecTV customer, this app is a no-brainer must-have.

14. HowCast. FREE. Ever needed to know, well, anything? Like how to replace a kitchen faucet? Or how to ask a girl out on a date? Or how to pressure wash the outside of your house for painting? Get this app.

It’s chock full of videos, all free, from Howcast.com. They’re like mini instructional video podcasts. Another great app. Some videos are rather funny, such as the one that tells you how to be more appealing to women. Easy to waste a lot of time with this app…or to zero in on instructions you really need.

There you have it.

What are some of your must-have apps?