Recomended Apps

My Favorites Appstore/ Jailbreak apps:

Categories - This app lets you create folders on your desktop and throw icons into them.  Not sure how this feature slipped by Apple, but I don’t want pages of applications I rarely use.  Really helps you maintain all your apps.

The only downside is when you open a folder, it takes a few seconds to load but for someone built on top of iPhone’s OS, it’s really a great app.

Facebook - Coming from a Blackberry Curve, I can’t believe what I was missing.  The Facebook app for the iPhone is years ahead of the one on the Blackberry.

Anyway, this one is pretty self explanatory.  If you’re a frequent Facebook user, this app will become something you’ll use several times a day.

Free RSS - This is a really good basic RSS reader.  It does have a few crashing problems, but they aren’t too frequent and when they do occur you can easily jump right back into the app.  If you’re looking for a straight forward RSS reader, this is really a great little app.  I use it almost daily.

Pandora - No surprises this app is listed on here, but for those who don’t know, Pandora is a free music steaming app that plays songs based on your own preferences and based on bands you like.  The sound quality is great and rarely do I experience issues with skipping.  They recently upgraded it so it shows album art.  Highly recommended.

SBSettings - Another one of my favorite apps.  One thing that was a disappointment with the iPhone was the battery life, but ever since using this app my battery life problems have been resolved.  For me, I only needed the EDGE network most of the time.  This app lets you quickly enable/disable 3G, WiFi, Location Services, SSH and others without a quick flick of your status bar.  No need to exit out of the app you’re in.

This application also lets you hide icons that you never use (instead of stuffing them in some Categories folder).  You can also change your battery icon to display the percentage of battery you have left instead of the small battery fill icon (you rotate between the number and icon by tapping on it once).

It also has a little dock feature to throw app icons into.  If you are or want to avoid having battery issues this is a must-have app.

Highly Recommended Apps:

Darkroom - After trying several of the (free) camera apps, I really liked Darkroom.  It’s simple and has the basic features I’m looking for.  The app will display a timer bar that will fill up as it detects the stability of the iPhone.  When your phone is completely stable for a few seconds, it will auto-snap a picture.  It will improves the quality of your pictures.

It also lets you discard the image right away, instead of putting into your Camera Roll folder and having to go in later to delete the bad pictures you took.  This has become my default camera app.

FontSwap - This application lets you change the font of your whole iPhone.  I got it for the Neo Sans Intel system font.  I saw someone mention it on some iPhones forum and loved how it looked.  All the screenshots here are taken with my iPhone using that font.  It comes with a bunch more if you don’t Neo Sans Intel (weirdo  :wink:).

Google Mobile - Again, no surprise I’m including this app on the list.  While the Google homepage on the Safari browser is actually quite good, I really like using this app especially when you unlock the hidden “Bells and Whistles” menu.

To open this hidden menu (and it may take a few tries), simply go into the Settings of the Google Mobile App while using one finger to pull up on the settings so the blank space appears under About, using your other finger and rub back and forth in that blank area.  After a few tries, “Bells and Whistles” will appear.

The best setting in that menu is the ability to open up search links within the Google Mobile App, instead of it opening it in Safari.  Really speeds up searching.

The app also comes with voice searching, and uses the technology in the iPhone that detects if the phone is by your ear to trigger the voice recording feature so it can search.  My only complaint with the app is its load time.  Seems like it takes a few too many seconds to open something so basic.  If the speed issue is tied to the voice recogization, they should allow you to disable it.

Notifier - Another one of those apps designed to fill the gap of a missing features that Apple didn’t include in their firmware (for some unknown reason).  This application will place little icons in your status bar to indicate if you have a new SMS message, a new email, if your phone is in vibrate, if you have a missing call, etc.

I had tried several apps that do the same thing, and none of them (including this one) would give you a timed vibrate or ring if you have a new type of notification when the app is described to have that feature.  Maybe it is a compatibility issue with 2.2, who knows, I just hope it’s fixed soon.  Anyway, this is a really nice app to have despite it not working fully.

NOTE: I’m not exactly sure the official name of this app.  In Cydia, you download it under Notifier but it installs as Reminder.

Stitcher - Along with Pandora, this has become an app I use almost daily on my commute.  Instead of having to be subscribed to a podcast, this app will let you stream podcasts without having to download them first.

The only “catch” is you can only stream podcasts that are in their directory but for my uses, the selection is great.

TuneWiki - This is a great app if you want to follow along with the lyrics of songs.  It functions almost identicial to the iPod app (it doesn’t play video) except it downloads already synced lyrics automatically depending on the song you’re listening to.

It has a few stability issues, but overall it works very well.  I’ve only had a few songs it couldn’t find.

Winterboard - This application gives you more control over your Springboard (what the iPhone GUI is called).

Take this screenshot of my main screen:

Winterboard is doing several things here (and can do more).

• I have the Neo Keys and Neo Dialer installed as Winterboard themes so the phone dialer and keyboard use the Neo Sans Intel font.
• The wallpaper you set on your lock screen is hidden when you unlock your phone.  With Winterboard, you can set it up to display the wallpaper behind your icons (instead of the black background).
• The image that is around the docked icons has been hidden (or set transparent, if that’s you want to call it).

However, the main purpose of Winterboard is to allow you to apply system wide themes, or area specific themes.  I personally like the default UI with a few little tweaks.

Though, speaking of the dock..

Five Icon Dock - Just as the name suggests, this app will allow you to put 5 icons in the bottom dock instead of the max of 4.

Other Recommended Apps:

Backgrounds - This is a simple app that lets you browse through pictures and set the ones you like as your wallpaper.  The images are actually saved to your phone, so this app only acts as a method of getting wallpaper.

Cycorder - Another app that you think woul dbe included with the iPhone.  Cycorder uses your camera to record video with audio.  The quality is decent, and can easily be pulled off your phone via SSH.

It does have ads in it, but they aren’t all that intrusive

.

Flixster - The App Store is full of apps similiar to Flixster, but I found that Flixster is the better movie app.  It does what you’d expect from a movie app.  Tells you what movies are out and uses your location to find local theaters and start times.

It also lets you watch trailers of movies that are out (or coming out).  Really nice if you’re out and not sure what movie you want to see.

Ocarina - The only app on this list that costs money.  However, only $0.99.  This fun little app lets you not only play the Ocarina on your phone and go to emule’s site and play user submitted songs, but you can pick different regions of the world and randomly listen to someone play their Ocarina.

It’s interesting to listen to someone in the middle of no where play their Ocarina.

 

NPR Mobile - While basic, this app lets you stream all of NPR’s shows.  This is found in the previously mentioned Stitcher, but if you are only looking for NPR programming, I’d 

recommend this app.

Shazam - Ever hear a song on the radio and want to know the artist and/or name.  Well with Shazam, you can hold your phone up to the speaker and it will identify the song in about 10-15 seconds.

Another app named Midomi is a similiar to Shazam, but after both me and my wife used it (with almost no luck) and couldn’t get it to identify anything, we stuck with Shazam.

Tipster - Nothing special about this app.  Enter in the amount of the bill, how good the service was, how many in your party, and it splits the check.  Not much more to say about this one, works well and is simple.

Urbanspoon - Having trouble thinking of a place to eat?  This app will randomly find a place based on the amount you want to spend, what type of food you want, and your location.  You can let it be completely random or be specific.

My one complaint is that if it doesn’t find a restaurant near your location, it will find one really far from your location without giving you some type of message letting you know it couldn’t find any near you.  Maybe I’m being picky.

USA Today - One of the bigger disappointments with the iPhone is the lack of news apps.  The NewYork Times app has too many problems with stories not loading to really use it.  I’m not a fan of USA Today, but they did make a really nice news app.  I only hope more news sites I frequent will follow their lead (that’s right Huffington Post, I’m looking at you).

Weather Channel - Now this is more of a personal preference.  I tried all the weather apps and it became a tossup between The Weather Channel app and Weatherbug.  Try both out and see what you like more.

Ultimately, I went with TWC because of how it displayed the data, and when you choose video, it played a local video for your area instead of video covering national weather.

Wikipanion - A simple application that pulls of Wikipedia entries and formats them nicely.  There are a handful of Wikipedia apps available but this one seems to be the better of them all (to be fair, I didn’t try any of the paid apps).

One thing that I really like is the smart search suggester (similiar to what Google does) that comes up as you’re typing.

Yelp - Just like the website, you can look up directions and reviews to any restaurant.  It’s a great app to have in your pocket.

Conclusion:

Well there you have it.  That should get you started taking full advantage of you iPhone.  I’m positive that I didn’t list some really great apps, so feel free to post a comment with your recommendations.  I’ll be sure to check it out and if I like it, I’ll include it on the list here.