First Week with the iPhone: The Apps

While not exactly the first week, a majority of the apps about to be reviewed are ones I got within the first week. I’m going give a screenshot of my iPhone pages and give some quick-fire reviews of the apps I believe are worth mentioning. Since I have so many apps I will split this post into two different ones, so expect the second one to come sometime next week.

All of the apps listed are free unless otherwise noted.

Page 1- The Once a Day Apps

Calendar – I have never been a daily planner person, but since the iPhone I find myself putting all my meetings, events and birthdays in it. I used Google Sync to keep all my mail, contacts and calendar in line so I have cloud-based syncing for my stuff. Now I keep a Google Calendar widget on my iGoogle frontpage and am doing a much better job with remembering people’s birthdays.

Snapture[iTunes link]](paid app) – This application enhances the iPhone’s build-in camera. It adds things like zooming, a larger shutter button, and a level. It also takes three pictures, back-to-back, to ensure that at least one turns out well. I chose this app over some of the others because I wanted an app that’s main concern was taking better photos, not doing post processing. If there is a picture that I like then I’d rather bring it into Photoshop to do my post proccessing. My one qualm with this app is that there isn’t a way to select my area of focus as there is in the native app. So if I’m getting particularly artsy with my depth of field I have to use the native app.

Maps – Not really a review, but simply a statement that I love never being lost anymore.

The Weather Channel[iTunes link] – All the weather you’d expect and need in an app. You can get four different timeframes for weather; Current, Hourly, 36 Hour and 10 Day. It provides a weather video of your area. And also gives severe weather notices.

Fieldrunners[iTunes link](paid app) – This is a tower defense game. I played this game every free moment that first week. The artwork is well done and the game play is perfect for an iPhone game. After I beat each level on easy that first week though my playing really slacked off. The game seemed to get too difficult to complete on the medium setting and there aren’t any noticeable incentives for me to beat the game on the medium difficulty. If the hope of new levels or added towers, hung like a carrot in front of me then perhaps my love for this game wouldn’t have waned so much. I still play it on occasion, but get quickly frustrated by level 20 if my defense isn’t flawless.

AppBox Pro[iTunes link](paid app) – This app is a collection of many smaller utility style apps. It holds things like a level, currency converter, tip calculator, ruler, translator and more. This app is worth the price even though you can get most of those things in free apps simply for the screen real estate efficiency it provides by having all of those within one app.

TweetDeck[iTunes link] – This is my current twitter app. It works well for me with a few crashes from time to time. I’m not a huge twitterholic so paying for something like Tweetie isn’t worth it to me yet. I find myself clicking on more links from people because I often use TweetDeck when I’m bored and wanting something to do, so this app has helped me engage in the twitterverse a bit more.

Facebook[iTunes link] – This app is the only reason my facebook status gets updated. I quit logging into the main page a few months ago, so I like keeping a better consistency with my status updates now. The app makes it very easy to mange most of your facebook life with in. I don’t feel as though I’m missing any real functionality by using the iPhone app over the actual website.

Dictionary[iTunes link] – This application gets used more than most all my other apps. I love trying to learn new words and incorporate them into my vocabulary and this app has a nice Word of the Day feature that I can learn new words with and it also provides sentences to use them in. Along with the dictionary and word of the day, this app also is a thesaurus. Another nice thing about this app is that it doesn’t require the Internet. An entire dictionary and thesaurus is downloaded with the app, so I can quickly get the definitions I need without waiting on a slow internet connection to provide them.

Bookmark[iTunes link](paid app) – In my previous iPhone post I mentioned being frustrated with the iPods inability to remember my spot in my audiobooks. This is the application I purchased to mend that problem. This application does have a few griping points though. Mainly is that it can’t run in the background. If I’m listening to a book and the author uses a word I don’t know, I can’t simply hide this app and look up the definition with the dictionary app without stopping the audiobook. The other problem is that this app is just a front end to the native iPod app so if I were listening to a podcast at 2x normal speed, then my audiobook zips right along at that speed. Hopefully these issues can be remedied soon.

Page 2 – Timewasters and Quick Reference Apps

Amazon[iTunes link] – This application lets you do almost anything you’d like to relating to your Amazon account. You can search for products, view recommendations, purchase items, track purchases and view wishlists. Another feature that works well for the iPhone app is Amazon Recommends. Snap a picture of an item you like, upload it to Amazon Recommends and within minutes you get an e-mail detailing what the item is and link to purchase it on Amazon. I’ve only used this feature a couple of times, but it works well. I feel that the app could be greatly improved if it worked on its browsability. I visit the Amazon.com website sometimes just to wander aimlessly to find things to add to my wishlists. This app doesn’t make doing that easy, so I’d like to see some improvement in that area.

Yelp[iTunes link] – Yelp is a Point of Interest(POI) application. Yelp.com has been a longstanding website used for people to give reviews of everything such as restaurants, bars, banks and gas stations. Take those years of people rating and reviewing different locations all over the US and give it some location awareness and you’ve got a fantastic application. No more, “What’s there to eat around here” or “Is there anything fun to do in this town”.  The ability to find top rated locations and get direction from where you currently are to where the location is within a few button clicks makes this a killer app.

Layar[iTunes link] – Augmented reality is probably going to be the buzzword of 2010 and this app is a proof of concept for it. Yelp has an augmented reality view also called Monocle. The iPhone uses augmented reality to show in what direction POI are through the camera. So if you are looking for restaurants in a certain direction, layar will show you which restaurants are in that direction. As you turn your view, the display updates with new restaurants in your new view. Layar appears to be more open then what Yelp is. More databases of locations, such as apartments, can be added to give more layers of views to augment reality even further.

Showtimes[iTunes link] – This is the app I chose to get my movie times and reviews. It does what you’d want it to. It shows theaters around you, with their movies and showtimes. It also shows what movies are new and upcoming. The app itself tends to be on the slow side when pulling its data. I might give the Fandango app a try to see if it is any zippier.

Mint[iTunes link] – Mint is a controversial website where you can track all your financial dealings in one location. Give mint all your login info to your bank accounts, credit cards, loans and 401k and it will pull in all your account information into one spot. If you’re like me with several accounts to manage it is a huge timesaver for my monthly budget to have all this information in one location. The app lets you view all your account transactions, track your budget and gives alerts if there is any noteworthy activity going on in your accounts. The app works well, but it is a tad clunky. Button presses can take a few seconds to register. I would also like a setting in the app to not get alerts. If you’re already comfortable enough to give mint.com all you information, then there is very little reason not to have this app on your iPhone. For added security can give the app a 4 digit password and login to the app each time.

IGN[iTunes link] – IGN.com is a very popular video game review website. This application holds their latest game reviews and ratings. You can filter by gaming systems to see only games reviewed on that system. You can also search for game reviews by genre.

Cartoon Wars Lite[iTunes link] – Yet another tower defense game. You send your stick figure minions against his stick figure minions. Get gold to upgrade your units. The lite version is enough for me. I didn’t find anything compelling enough to purchase the paid version.

FishFrenzy[iTunes link] – You are a small fish in a big, big ocean. Eat smaller fish to grow bigger. Avoid being eaten by larger fish. Keep eating until you’re at the top of the ecosystem. I lose interest in this game after five minutes. My wife, however,  is apparently trying to set a Guinness Record for how long someone can play this game.

JellyCar[iTunes link] – This is a quirky time trial car game. You are a squishy car than can bend to get through obstacles. You are also given short bursts when you can grow to 10x your normal size. The levels are challenging to get through and require some good timing in places.

Fox Sports[iTunes link] – I am one of the few males on this planet who cares very little about setting aside hours of my week to yell at a screen full of little men in colored uniform hoping that if they would just hear my poignant remarks and analysis of the situation then they could win the game and bring joy and hope to the hearts of the people they love. This app helps me connect better with those types of people if I choose to by giving me all the latest scores and news from all sports.

Wikipedia[iTunes link] – Search Wikipedia. The content is laid out well for the iPhone and makes finding stuff pretty simple.

Daily Deviations[iTunes link] – This application displays featured pieces of artwork from the popular deviantart.com community. The pictures are presented in an easy to view fashion and can be saved to the iPhone. A great app to get inspiration from and see the beautiful pieces from the community.

RedLaser[iTunes link]](paid app) – This is a barcode reader app. Scan a barcode and it will try to find the Amazon price and it will do a Google Product search. This application isn’t quite what I was hoping for. Being able to scan an item in a store to see what it sells for on Amazon is of little value to me. If I didn’t mind waiting a week to get something then I would buy it on Amazon for a lower price normally. But if I’m in a physical retailer and planning to purchase something, I’d like to see what other local retails have this item for sale at. Then I could travel there and get my item today, or use that to haggle for a better price at the retailer I am already at.

PhoneFlicks[iTunes link] – View and manage your Netflix queue from your iPhone. The app provide a good interface for finding movies, but with one major flaw. I can’t filter just instant play movies. I very rarely use the DVD mailing aspect of Netflix. All of my Netflixing occurs through my Xbox 360. If I’m at a restaurant with friends trying to find a movie to watch with them later I need the ability to see just instant movies and determine if there is a movie worth watching on Netflix or if I need to go rent one.

That’s it for part one. Expect iPhone App Reviews: Part 2 shortly.