My 12 Best of iPhone Apps

[UPDATE] I have written an updated version of this post here.

I don’t like to write super-quick reviews, written just a few clicks after installing a new application. I rather take some time to try those apps seriously. After weeks of usage, it gets pretty clear, which apps i actually use, which one i like or what i miss. A lot of those apps just don’t make sense, are buggy or don’t work at all… so in the end, there are only a few real must haves :-)

so lets get started: (more after the jump)

Instapaper: Nice app to save websites (or parts of it) for offline reading. Just add a “read later” bookmarklet to your browser or iPhone/iPod Touch and whenever you stumble over a website which you would like to read later, hit this new button: “read later”. I use this a lot, when i scan news and blogs very fast. Interesting stuff gets saved, so i can read it later – even offline – when i’ve got the time.

Evernote: surprisingly helpful, because it organizes pretty much all your notes and makes them easy and fast accessible. Think of writing some notes to a paper (whiteboard etc.) and quickly take a photo with Evernote. Not only that it is automatically synchronized to your desktop-application, but you can search for any word containing your notes. Evernote will show you all results which contain this word, no matter, if it is handwriting, colored or in low dpi. Try it! It’s lot more than great OCR.
Nice Article: Why Evernote will make ist and 20 Awesome Ways to Use It.

Apple Remote: original Apple application, which uses WiFi to remotely control your iTunes and Apple TV. In addition to the standard features like play, pause, next, volume etc, you can search your library and it shows you all your covers. Most important feature imho is how it connects to your iTunes/AppleTV. It uses WiFi instead of infrared or bluetooth. This way, you can move through your entire building… as long as you are connected to your network, the Remote-app works. This is really neat :)

NetNewsWire: This is a RSS Newsreader, which syncs with your desktop-app and the web-app. Newsreaders are nice tools to conveniently control the daily flood of information. Although i use those tools for a long time now, i never became familiar with them… something bothered me all the time, but i never got to know what problem i had. NetNewsWire for the iPhone changed my news-reading behavior. The difference is, that i can read my feeds on the go now. There are so many moments, which you can use to read over some of your feeds without the need to take dedicated time to read those news sitting in front of the PC. Another Feature i would not like to miss is the synchronization. Every device knows, which news you already read… so no waste of time with re-reading old news.

Palringo: First multi-messenger app (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Jabber etc.) on the iPhone and to date the only one in the app-store. I would love to have my Adium on the iPhone, but till then, Palringo does it’s work. As Adium, Palringo does not support Skype, which is quite painful, as lots of my contacts use Skype only.

Exposure: A flickr tool, which allows you to surf and upload photos. Nice but creepy is the “near me” feature. Hit the button and you’ll get geocoded photos of places near your location, uploaded from other users with proper geocodes. The results are surprisingly good in a town as small as Nürnberg (500k inhabitants).

ShoZu: Multi-Social-Network Application. It supports sites like Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, Photobucket, Twitter, Friendtser, LiveJournal, Picasa and over 20 other websites. It checks all websites you use and gives you a quick overview of all the updates in all your social networks. Proactive participation is not supported for every network, but most.

Twinkle / Twitterrific: Twitterrific is a famous twitter client for desktop and was the first one in the store. It is straight forward, easy to use and has basically all the features you need. Definitely good choice. Twinkle does the same with a slightly modified user interface (which is imho a little bit better) and one additionally major upgrade: geocoded tweets. Like this, you can define to read only tweets in a specific distance of your position. Imagine the possibilities :-)

Zenbe Lists: free, simple and easy to use ToDo-List. It syncs with the corresponding website lists.zenbe.com, so you can manage your lists also in your browser, which still is much faster, than writing all on your iphone screen. There exists a basic sharing feature, which lacks some important features. It’s easy to share your list to someone else, but to date you won’t see a friends shared list your account. In other words, it won’t show up in the iPhone app. That’s something they add hopefully soon :)

Truphone: Voip-App for iPhone. Compared to other voip carriers, truphon is rather expensive. Quick: comparison

* Skype to landline/mobile usa : 0,02€ –> Truphone 0,06€
* Skype to landline germany: 0,02€ –>Truphone 0,06€
* Skype to mobile germany: 0,23€ –> Truphone 0,30€

but still for many situations, this is cheaper than calling directly over your mobile carrier. (At least while traveling in other countries, it’s definitely cheaper then roaming.

Important: Because of Apple’s (or the carrier’s?) restrictions, Truphone can only be used when connected to a WiFi Network. NOT working, while connected to 2G or 3G.

Tuner: i bought it, when it was still the only app for internet radio in the App Store. I’m not sure any more how much i had to pay in the first days, but definitely less then 4,99€, what the charge now. For me Tuner works nice, is very easy to use and has thousands of internet radio broadcasts. Although there are now similar free apps in the App Store, I did not try them… so no comparison possible right now.

The following apps are not yet tested, but might be interresting or worth to mention:

perhaps interesting:

Filemagnet (move files from your mac/pc to your iPhone and open most popular file formats), audio recorder (if you use a dictating machine, it‘s perhaps a substitute)

worth a mention:

Facebook (already 1 Mio Facebook apps installed on iphones around the world), Geopher Lite (tool for geocaching), Mocha VNC (Desktop-Remote-Administration)

Finally, what apps do I miss in the App Store?