My iPhone is running something like this…
OK, this is weird. I’m not too sure how to sum up the last couple months of life with the iPhone other than…
“Great”.
Yeah. Ugh.. I’m no fan boy – I SWEAR (the rest of MobilityDigest’s staff might think so)! But the phone simply WORKS – and very well at that! I’ve been screwing with and hacking around on phones for the better part of the past decade and I’m so friggin’ glad to finally have a phone that just WORKS. I don’t have to hard reset, soft reset, tweak the GPS, install third party apps to make the user interface or settings better (although there ARE some cool tweaks available once JailBroken), and I no longer need to watch the device-of-your-choice forum over on XDA-developers.com like a hawk in anticipation of a new fancy ROM.
I’ve never owned a phone that made it easier to like your phone than the iPhone 4. Even my wife’s iOS4 iPhone 3GS seems a bit clunky even though it’s just a slightly slower, slightly thicker, smaller capacity, ‘retina’ display-less, non-bad-ass-camera having plastic version (and a few other features too, but whatever).
I’ll break this into a few groups to try and make it easier. All links goto the App Store… which works on PC/Mac or on the iPhone. So click away if you’ve got an iPhone/iPad (or an iPod Touch since most of these only require WiFi). I’m still working on the links.. give me a break, there’s a crap-load of apps here.. if you see something that might be interesting, just search for it if I haven’t linked it yet! I’m also going to go through and write descriptions for all of the apps that I use on a daily basis and recommend that any iPhone user gets.
I should also mention that I’ve Jailbroken the phone and I have the Cydia and Rock App ‘stores’ on the phone and have installed a few apps from there. I’ll separate them from this list at the bottom.
Note: This list is not meant to be the be-all end-all list. It’s what is currently on my phone, and most of these apps get used. Some are there for the occasional use, or the ‘just in case’, but rarely do I keep something on my phone if I know I’ll never use it again. Some of the games are neglected, but that’s usually because I’m preoccupied with another at the moment
Music and Audio:
Slacker Radio – Slacker radio is the best radio app available for the iPhone. Station Caching for offline play, customizable stations, high quality and very few disconnects makes this app my #1 app on the phone.
Pandora Radio
Last.fm
NPR Music
98 Rock
SHOUTcast
5-0 Radio
Y! Music
Trippy Replay
I Am T-Pain
Remote
Photo and Video:
iMovie – edit your 720p videos on the phone and share them with the world via youtube or email ($5)
Hulu Plus – High quality streams of popular shows and hundreds of movies over 3G. Requires Hulu+ account ($10/month). I’ve used Hulu+ to stream about 3 episodes of X-Files in a row and only lost around 10-15% of battery life.
Flickr
PhotoShop.com Mobile
SeaDragon
Jalbum
GorillaCam
HP iPrint
Mill Colour
Hipstamatic – Create Unique photo using virtual lenses, flashes, and films. ($1.99)
Camera+
TubeSnap
JotNot Pro – Scan in documents to Google Docs, email and more. (also performs OCR tasks!) ($5)
FatBooth
Utilities and Tools:
Battery Magic
AT&T myWireless
ezDesktop
The Weather Channel
RedLaser
Siri – Your own personal voice-activated secretary in your pocket. Apple recently acquired Siri, let’s hope that they do big things with this technology!
MeterTimer
Glass Of Water – app from Toyota to help show you where you need to adjust your driving habits on your daily commute to more efficiently get there.
i2i Chat
Txt’n Drive – reads you your emails
Dictation – speech to text
At Once – text while walking!! Overlays keyboard and text field on the camera view
DIRECTV – setup DVR recording and order PPV
pocket BLU
Speed Test – test your 3G or Wifi speeds
Craigslist Pro – browse and list on craigslist with extreme ease! ($2)
Mapping and GPS:
Google Earth
Bing
CoPilot Live – GPS with traffic and ‘buddy’ features
Trapster – where’s the PoPo?
waze – Social Mapping.. you can quite literally make a new road appear on the global map if you’re the first wazer to drive it! (available on all platforms)
skobbler
iExit Diesel edition
Layar – augmented reality browser… tough to describe (also available on Android)
MapQuest Navigation
Point Inside – maps for airports and malls
Games (remember to check the “Top 25/50 Free” section in the app store everyday!!):
Rollercoaster
Gun Range
Tap Tap Revenge 3
Tiki Premium
AC-130
S.K.O.B. 2
Mr.Space!!
Dirt Moto
LetsTans Dlx
Cube Runner
Doodle God
Doodle Bomb
Roswell
Buck Hunter
Ground Effect
Babylon Twins
Commando
Build-a-lot
Samurai
Alicia
Tesla Wars
Chevy Baseball
Gyro Draw
Talking Tom
Glade Composer
Chop Shushi!
Jailbreaker
iKungFu
TapDefense
Angry Birds
Stupid Test 5
Finger Physics
Alpha Runner
Fantastic Contraption
TRON
Coastal Defense
Search 60
Time Jumper
Pocket God
Type n Talk
Tap Studio
BubbleXplode
Red Ball 2
Sudoku 2
Castle
Cat Physics
Duke Nukem soundboard
Stick Golf
Super 7
Solitare
Helium Balloon
Graffiti Ball
Traffic Rush
Namco Portal
Slingshot Cowboy
Zombie Shock
Highborn
Beatwave
Glass Tower 2
Truckers Delight
Luxor
CoAtlantis
Sentinel 2
Chicks
Marine Sharpshooter
Jump O’Clock
Civilization
Heavy Gunner
Mega Jump
Sound Drop
BtBx
Baby Scratch
Books and reference:
iBooks
Barnes and Noble eReader
Kindle
Audible
Audio Books
Shopping:
PayPal
Amazon
Yowza – coupons you can use at local stores
BestBuy Gaming
BestBuy Reward Zone
Cydia / Rock App (jailbreak to get these):
My3G – enables iTunes and appstore to download any file over 3G, allows for 3G facetime, and more
install0us –
FontSwap (Army Stencil, Ferrari phone, etc)
FinderMobile
GV Mobile +
GrooveShark – listen to any song you want at any time.
Strength
iWalMart
WinterBoard
Notified
MiWi – Free Tethering on your iPhone
I actually have more apps on the phone, but I don’t think that most of them are even worth mentioning as some of them are just different versions of better ones listed above that I’m using for comparison’s sake.
All of these apps fit on 3 Home screens. USE FOLDERS PEOPLE!!
If you have a question about one of these apps, let me know.
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About The Author
We all have different experiences, and I do not doubt you have the “just works” phone for you. Like you, I have used WM since PPC2002, about a dozen PDA’s / phones. The iPhone 4 is a real nice phone; however you are lucky that you do not need to reset it. With both the iPhone 4, and an iPod touch 3G, I have to soft reset them (due to freezing) as often, if not more often than any WM device I have owned going all the way back to PPC2002. Many of the freezes are in Safari. Requiring iTunes for phone management without any alternative in 2010 is unacceptable. As nice as the retina display is, it does seem rather small after using the HD2, HTC Advantage,Samsung mondi, and the 4″ VGA devices like the PPC2003 Toshiba e830.
I do favor the bigger screen WM devices, and have found the standard today screen to be finger friendly on a 4″ VGA screen 99% of the time. I have tried the shells, but usually revert back to standard with Pocket Plus enhancements. I do like Sense on the HD2 though, it is very finger friendly.
I have not jailbroken the iPhone or touch, and never had the desire to use a XDA ROM either even though I am a power user / tech geek.
I do respect all opinions, just want to add a slightly different opinion.
finally a constructive article about the iphone. thanks! i bought a used iphone from a friend to fill the gap from my fuze to a wp7 device but honestly i dont think I’ll be moving back to WP… not a fan boy, and apple does sometimes annoy me, but these iPhones just work too good.
@jimtravis I’ve never had to hard reset or soft reset this phone. In two months time, the only time I’ve reset this thing was to time the startup difference between other devices or when cydia needed to reset something. iTunes is a bummer, I’ll give you that, but since you only need it to perform upgrades and backups, it’s not that big of a deal. Activesyc\windows mobile center is a very simple thing to use in comparison, but you. Don’t really NEED to use iTunes if you don’t want to. Jailbreak the thing and drag & drop music is possible. I’ve setup friends iPods in the past to be able to drag and drop and even auto start an app embeded on the iPod to find music on any PC you plugged it into.
And you’ve never used a 3rd party ROM?! You’re missing out man! Winmo is HORRIBLE without them,
Yes opinions and experiences are different for everyone, but, for once I recommend the iPhone over winmo. 4″ screens are VERY nice, but they need to display android IMO.
I have never used a 3rd party ROM because the supplied ROM’s reliably performed all tasks I needed to do with my devices. I disagree that the supplied WM ROM’s are horrible, they work fine for my uses.
Now that jailbreaking is legal in US, I did jailbreak one of the iDevices, and I still can not do some necessary tasks that I have been performing regularly with my WM devices since 2002. I also don’t like the cat and mouse game with Apple updates. Unless further use changes my opinion of the jailbreak, back to the stock iOS for me.
I am happy that your iPhone has been stable. For me, my WM are more stable than my iOS devices. Just yesterday, I had to reset an iPhone 4, and a 3rd gen touch due to freezes. One freeze was in Safari, and the other a 3rd partly app for live transit updates. My soft resets with WM devices are rare.
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