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iPhone Apps
74 iPhone apps
Oct 14th
Amazon UK
Free
The Amazon app can be very dangerous. Search for an item, and just like the site you can have ordered it and have it winging its way to you, wherever you are. It’s also got a barcode scanner, which will look up the item on Amazon, and tell you the Amazon price. The app still manages to cram in lots of data, with ratings, descriptions and other prices and items still displayed. Essential for bargain hunters.
Free
Auntie’s app needs no introduction. For keeping up with breaking news, and sports results there’s little that does a better job of bringing it all together. Don’t forget that you can customise the BBC app, so that you only get news you’re interested in, and there’s email, Facebook and Twitter integration to share what you’re reading.
Free
Never be out-bid on an item again, with the power of eBay’s iPhone app in your pocket you can keep track of auctions, bid while you’re away from your computer and be alerted if a cheeky competitor pips you to the final blow of eBay’s digital gavel.
Facebook
Free
A must-install for anyone with an iPhone and an account on the world’s largest social network, the Facebook iPhone app is a dream to use, letting you do pretty much anything you can in front of a web-connected PC. It’ll even dish up chat on the go, so you can tap out messages to mates while they’re sat at work, and you’re… on the train in to work.
Free
Weather: in detail. This tells you what to pack for your holidays, and whether you’ll need a scarf when you leave the house. Get an hour by hour breakdown, complete with sunsets and sunrises and meteorological maps.
Free
Putting the Paypal iPhone app in your pocket means you’ll never have to nip to the cashpoint again. You’ll simply be able to borrow tenners from your mates, and put the money in their bank account from the comfort of your iPhone! Either that, or it’ll let you keep track of payments for items bought on eBay.
Free
Skype’s been floating around on the iPhone for ages, but its power to make free calls over VOIP has been ramped up recently by the ability to run in the background in iOS 4 (So you can, you know, receive Skype calls). If you’ve got an iPhone 4 or iPod touch 4G meanwhile, you can make video calls with Skypers too, which is one in the eye for Apple-only FaceTime.
Free
Tesco Groceries, like the Amazon UK app, has a barcode scanner, but this isn’t for price checking, it’s to add things to your shopping basket, whether it’s some particularly nice vino your mate has rolled out for dinner, or the posh chocolate you just finished on a Friday night on the sofa. The idea is to let you manage your shopping list and shopping cart for online groceries from your iPhone.
Free
A must have for anyone wanting to buy train tickets on the go, get them cheaper with The Trainline. With the app you can plan a journey, buy tickets, check up on your account details, and set your home station. Allow the app to use your location, and it will instantly find your next train home.
Free
The official Twitter app is the best Twitter app for iPhone, and needs no introduction. The official Twitter app can handle more than one twitter account. It deals with all the things the online site can do, including lists, follows, unfollows, and profile edits.
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£3.99
Analytics Pro gives a super detailed view of your site analytics, and you can pretty much do anything you can on the full site, from setting date range, to drilling down into any area of content, visitor, goals and traffic analysis. Export to text or a PDF and shoot it over the air to a printer using AirPrint.
Free
If you’re shopping for a new set of wheels, the AutoTrader app should be your go to place – none of that print mag nonsense. The AutoTrader app has a search function to find a car near you, plus phone numbers and a “Garage” function that means you can save the listing to chase it up later.
Free/59p
Smartphone batteries are notorious for not lasting more than a day, and conking out before you get home if you’ve had a heavy day on the mobile. Battery Doctor does what the percentage display on your iPhone can’t: it shows you how much life you’ve got on your iPhone in hours and minutes.
Free
If you’ve got a HTPC with Boxee on board, or the dedicated Boxee Box from D-Link, you need this in your life. This smart remote connects over Wi-Fi, giving you two ways to control all your media from your sofa. You can use traditional on screen buttons, or clever gestures, so you needn’t even take your eyes away from the screen.
Free
Printers are boring, and generally never seem to work. This cuts out the middle man and sends and receives from your printer direct to your iPhone. All you need is a compatible Brother printer and you’re good to go.
Free
Bump is some super nifty new app tech that means that simply by knocking your smartphone together with another, you can swap details in a smartphone data smooch. It works between operating systems too, so you can have an unlikely romance between an Android and an iPhone, iPad, or even an iPod touch.
Free
Those with transatlantic accents will find this app more responsive than those of us with strong regional twangs, but if you’ve got screen fatigue, or RSI from too much typing, this free app will give you a well earned rest. Speak into the phone, and this app will convert it in to speech. Perfect for penning your New York Times best seller on. It’s easy to skip through and correct the bits it gets wrong, and replace words, then just send it via email.
Free
The ultimate file sync service, Dropbox lets you sync files across devices, meaning you can edit and save a document that’s in your Dropbox folder, and those changes will be made across anything with Dropbox, your PC, Mac or iPhone. It’s also a quick way to send and receive files, and to export files to other iPhone apps.
Free
If you’re looking to document your life digitally, Evernote should be your best friend. This is the don of mobile note taking, which lets you make text notes, audio notes, take quick snapshots, pin files together, and pack it away neatly into a digital filing cabinet. Hit save, and that note will sync across all the devices you use Evernote with, be that your Mac, PC, iPad, iPod touch or even your Android phone.
£2.99
Instapaper lets you mark links for reading later, which sync to all your other devices hooked up to your Instapaper account. What makes this invaluable though is the Twitter integration: link your iPhone Twitter app with Instapaper and you can save URLs in tweets for reading later, with one click. Essential.
Free
Managing e-mail lists on the move has never been so fun, or easy. Mailchimp lets you send tons of e-mails without hassle, and if you’re out and about with your iPhone you can even add friends to your list there and then! Get reports on the progress of your mailouts, and see how many willing recipients you’ve racked up!
Free
Mappiness is part of an enormous research effort from LSE, which is collecting reams of data about what makes people happy. This isn’t just one way contribution either, this nifty UI asks you to rate how relaxed, awake and happy you are, where you are, with who, and what you’re doing. It’ll then feed you back analysis of your results, show you a graph of your happiness over time, and tell you what, statistically, you’re happiest doing, where and with who.
£1.79
Twitter’s official iPhone app (based on Tweetie) continues to get better and better, but if you’re not down with it, this is one of the best paid for iOS alternatives. It caches tweets for offline reading, lets you edit your profile from within the app, and best of all, has a superbly convenient homescreen with all the most used actions a tap away.
59p
Hands up who isn’t a bit rusty on basic GCSE maths? Nobody? Then you’ll be wanting to get percentages pronto. This app does the simple task of working out percentages when your brain doesn’t want to. Work out the percentage of a number, the percentage conversion of a fraction, or the percentage difference between two numbers.
Free
Remote is essential for anyone with an Apple TV, or in fact, with iTunes. Remote links across your Wi-fi network, so you can control what’s playing from anywhere in the house, and use the QWERTY keyboard to type out titles on Apple TV instead of inputting the text through the supplied remote.
Free
Rightmove is a boring but completely essential app if you’re looking for a new pad to call your own. It uses your GPS location to tell you about properties near you, so you can wander round your locale of choice, checking out the houses, then put a call in to the estate agent to book a viewing on the spot. It’s not just for buying – the Rightmove app lists houses up for rent too.
Free
If you have a Sonos system, you can hundreds of pounds by skipping the pricey remote and using your iPhone instead. We’ve used both the CR200 remote and the free Sonos iPhone app extensively, and the experience is exactly the same: quick search through your library, and an easy way to control multi-room audio.
Free
Gloriously lo-fi app that measures the sound volume of where you are. It’s particularly enjoyable if you’re at a really loud gig/club, and stood next to the speakers. Watch the shape of minimal techno.
Free
Speedtest tests the Wi-Fi connection you’re hooked up to, through download speed, upload speed and pings. It’s essential if you’re a heavy data user, and can help you decide where’s best to settle yourself before you start a data onslaught: the cafe with the 0.2Mbps Wi-Fi or the pub next door that’s pushing 8Mbps.
Free
The Tumblr app lets you update your Tumblr straight from your phone, and gives access to the dashboard too. Be aware, there’s one thing it won’t do: create photo galleries. Aside from this though, it’ll do anything the full Tumblr will in terms of what you can post: audio, video, links, quotes and photos (one at a time).
Free
TV Guide is designed to give you at a glance TV listings, without having to skip through menus and channel listings. You can also book a reminder to alert you when your favourite show is about to start, and it lists shows for Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, Freesat and Tiscali. It’s also cached, so even when you’re not online you can still get to the last bit of info you were looking at.
£0.59
WhatsApp Messenger gives you BlackBerry Messenger style chat with everyone in your phonebook – the twist is it’s cross platform, so you can natter with friends rocking Androids, Symbian and BizzackBerry phones too. Works like a charm.
Free
Voted the UK number one money saving app by The Times, Vouchercloud gives you money off cafes, restaurants, and coffee, and uses GPS to find the deals that are closest to you.
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Travel
AroundMe
Free
AroundMe lists the closest cafes, bars, petrol stations, cashpoints to you, plus hotels, hospitals and other essential locations. It will list or map them all, tell you how far you are away from the closest, and map the route too. A hook up with Wikipedia means you can also have a look at entries for your nearby spots: famous pubs, hospitals, and the cashpoint where some Z-list celeb once threw up in front of a pap.
£19.99
Forget TomTom on your iPhone: it costs too much, and what would happen if you decided to switch to Android on the next upgrade? No: far better to go with the equally impressive and shockingly well priced CoPilot Live for iPhone, which provides voice turn by turn navigation as you drive all over the country – or Europe if you’re so inclined. Excellent.
Free
Layar is the must have augmented reality app. Hold up your screen, and you can download free and paid widgets that will show you anything from the history of the canal you’re stood by to the constellations you’re seeing in the sky.
Free
Find a Boris bike when you’re out and about with this map of London, noting all bike locations and how many bikes are available at each spot too. This is one of about a small clutch of similar apps, which all use the same information. Pick which one has the best UI for you.
Free
Top table works across the UK and Europe. It’ll give you free booking and contact details for the scran joint of your choice, and there are also reams of offers, so you should never have to pay full price again. I’ll get this one darling…
59p
For the efficiency obsessed, Tube Exits is a must. Tell it where you’re going, and it tells you exactly what carriage to get into on the tube so that you’ll be near the exits when you get to your destination, and won’t get caught up in the front line of wheely suitcases, half assembled prams and briefcases on your way out into the light.
Free
TFL still doesn’t have its own iPhone app, or any other app for that matter. In its place, make sure you have TubeMap when you’re traversing this country’s fine capital. TubeMap comes complete with live updates and a journey planner.
Free
With the Zipcar app, you can find and book a Zipcar in a few minutes flat. Search by your favourite location, look up where you’re headed, or just look for the nearest one to you. Sort by vehicle, and even honk the horn of your reserved car remotely so it’s easy to find.
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Books, Music, News and Entertainment
Answer Me This
£1.79
We don’t usually advocate paid for apps of podcast feeds, since you can always just get the podcasts synced straight via iTunes anyway. But frankly, if any podcasters out there deserve your money, it’s Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann, the presenters of this hilarious series. Stream any episode, and even ask your question from within the app.
£2.39
Bloom is an ambient music creation tool created by legendary music producer Brian Eno and software designer Peter Chilvers. Proof that the iPhone isn’t just about handy tools and distracting games, Bloom is utterly entrancing and will have you puzzled for hours.
Free
Every film buff should have Flixster: watch trailers for the latest films, read the reviews and ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. It also uses your location to find where a film is on near you, or to tell you what’s on at your local. Plus, iTunes integration means you can rent movies through the app, and it will also help you find somewhere to eat after you’ve been to the flicks. Brilliant!
Free
While the iPod nano is the only Apple device with an FM radio inside, this handy, free app solves your problems by tuning into radio stations over Wi-Fi and 3G. You can even record shows too, if that’s what floats your boat. Great for those who can’t or won’t get Spotify Premium.
Free/£2.99/£3.99
The second iteration of the Guardian app brings in video, better footie results, live updates, and some practical bits and bobs like better integration of user comments, landscape mode and the ability to search across the full archive. It’s now subscription based, so you can buy in for £2.99 for six months, or £3.99 for 12.
Free
Our favourite bit of iBooks isn’t the enormous digital library of out of copyright reading, and free books, it’s the fact that it opens and saves PDFs onto your iPhone. We can attest to this being, in a number of situations, a complete godsend.
Free
The IMDB app can take full responsibility for solving many a pub argument, and helping to turn the phrase “it’s right on the end of my tongue” into one which is obsolete. IMDB gives access to 1.5m film and TV entries, and 3.5m people from the business. It even includes celebrity birthdays.
Free
The Kindle app uses Whipsersync to sync your reading across devices, including the Kindle. It means you can read on the iPhone, then swap to Kindle when you’re running low on battery, and back again, without losing your page, or any of the highlighting you’re doing.
Free
Bored of the music on your iPhone or iPod touch? Get the Last.fm iPhone app and it’ll dish up tunes through Wi-Fi or the iPhone’s 3G connection. It’ll even learn what you like, so personalised radio stations guarantee there’ll always be a song you like just one click away.
Free
If you haven’t got £400 to shell out for an original copy of Fantastic Four issue one, and equally don’t fancy stumping up for the enormous anthology to cart around on the train/bus/tube, then you can get it for just a couple of quid on the iPhone, along with a recommendations service, and a raft of free comics.
£3.49
McSweeney’s is the American publishing house set up by Dave Eggers. Their app is one of the most simple, user friendly design out there, and if you’re a sucker for short stories and funny literary rambles then McSweeney’s is a must have. Often, the stories are the perfect size for a short train or tube journey. More enriching than Angry Birds.
Free
SoundCloud is for listening on the go, but also recording. Use it to capture sounds when you’re out and about, or browse through your stack of things to listen to. Hook up with other people via Facebook and Twitter; share your recordings via email or publicly, plus scroll and comment in the waveform of the track. SoundCloud is promising more features will be added to the app as time goes by, so stay tuned.
Free
The Spotify app is a must, but with one caveat: you need to have a premium account, otherwise it’s useless. With a premium account though, you can stream straight through your phone, just like you would do at home.
Free
Choice headline from The Onion at time of writing: “Terrified FDA warns something makes bananas black after several days.” This is America’s best spoof newspaper, always tongue in cheek, and always giving a moonie to the zeitgeist.
Free/59p
Make like Little Boots with this fake Tenori-On synthesiser. You play via touch sensitive lights, which play in a beat. The best part: it’s impossible to make this sound bad, because it plays to a rhythm, and you can add and remove elements as you go.
59p
TuneIn Radio is an internet radio app that lets you tune into the world of global web radio broadcasts. You’ve got thousands upon thousands of stations to pipe into, with every genre catered for somewhere around the world.
£2.99
Loopy is a musical notepad, where you can thumb out a beat track, hum over the top of it, beatbox into your iPhone and input whatever sounds you can think of making. Loopy takes your input and creates perfectly synced loops to build a track in just a few minutes.
Free
America’s best loved, most travelled free-form radio has an iPhone app. Forget about that being a little out of character, and plunder the archives: dig up Murial’s Treasure, the now defunct calypso show, or tune into some oddball poetry. Whatever it is, you’ve probably never heard of it, but it’s likely you’ll love it.
Health and fitness
iMapMy Run
Free
iMapMyRun syncs with your online account, so that you can track distance, time, pace, route your run, and tweet your run in realtime. Your history is saved too, so you can see yourself improving at every step.
£2.99
Pzizz claims to help you sleep when insomnia has got you by the throat, and we can say that Electricpig writers have used its soothing sounds to get over late lonely nights. It has a binaural beat, soothing sounds and hypnotic words that aim to help you drift into a soothing dreamless sleep, and the time is adjustable, so you can set it to play you anything from 10-60 minutes of sleepy sounds.
59p
The Sleep Cycle alarm clock analyses your sleep patterns and wakes you up when you’re in the lightest sleep phase. In theory, this means you always wake up feeling refreshed, because you’ll never be dragged from the deepest depths of the land of nod by your alarm. It also tells you how well you’ve been sleeping, the average hours you get per night, and can be set to a 30 minute time frame to wake up on time.
£1.19
Weightbot will track your weight loss (on the condition you tell it the truth) and should spur you on to hit your targets. Set your goal, record your weight, calculate your BMI and watch your progress (or not) on a graph, which should give you the incentive to do better, whichever direction the graph is headed.
£1.19
If you have an inability to go to sleep without background noise, you’re not alone. And no, it’s not just you and Wayne Rooney. White Noise has managed to sell an app for precisely this reason. White Noise is packed full of soundscapes and background noises to help you drift off to sleep, from oceans crashing to the sound of an air con unit humming. Whatever gets you off to sleep, this should be your one stop shop.
Free
Working in conjunction with Withings’ Wi-Fi scales, this neat app grabs your daily weight (synced to the cloud by the high tech weighing scales) and lets you track your weight loss (or gain, if that’s your bag) without remembering to diligently jot down your progress each day. It’ll recognise multiple people too, and track your fat and lean mass automatically.
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Photo and video tools
Air Video
£1.79
Got a hoard of downloaded video on your computer? Chances are, most of it won’t play natively on an iPhone due to its limited format support. Air Video removes this problem entirely. The free server software for Mac and PC converts almost any format and container (MKV, AVI etc) in realtime, so after the shortest of pauses, videos play instantly, over the air and on your iPhone. Phenomenal.
£1.19
Everyone’s favourite/least favourite camera iPhone app is the Marmite of camera apps. This is mostly down to the terrible title, which is accurate, but has doomed it to the hipster sinbin. Choose vintage camera effects and make your holiday look like it was spent in 1977.
£2.99
You’ll need to have an iPhone 4 or new iPod touch for iMovie to work to its full potential, but imovie gives you the tools to edit your HD movie on the go, and publish it to YouTube or email it to absent friends, without having to go near your computer.
Free
Instagram has become wildly popular, and with good reason: the copious quantity of filters let you spruce up your camera shots, vintage style, and then bung them online to your social networks of choice at incredible speed. There really is no reason not to try this out: this is one of the very best iPhone apps for social meejah types.
£1.19
Sketches is like notepad, bastardised for drawing. Sketch out pictures, jot down text notes with scrawled diagrams, input shapes from Sketches’ stock set, and zoom in to take a closer look at the Picasso you’ve digitally recreated, then file it under “masterpieces” on your Sketches corkboard.
Free
This nifty app from Royal Mail lets you design and create your own set of stamps using your iPhone camera or photo reel. Stamps are a bit more than standard first class. For the pleasure of putting your image in the place of HRH, Royal Mail Smilers cost £7.80 for a sheet of 10 first class stamps and £13.95 for a sheet of 20.
Free/59p
A tilt shift lens blurs the top and bottom of your photo, making everything look like you’re shooting miniatures. It works best when you’re shooting from a height, down onto a scene, especially if there’s people in the shot too. This iPhone app does a fake version of what a £200 lens does on a DSLR.
Free
VideoJug is the ultimate How To app, with reams and reams of videos on how to learn to do such important life skills as moonwalking, and caring for lizards. Videos also come complete with text and instructions, so you won’t have to concentrate too hard on that plate-spinning video.
£2.99
Apple doesn’t want you to open any video files which aren’t H.264 encoded MP4 files. It’s just not down with it. Luckily VLC for iPhone totally is, happily playing through all your DivX AVI clips with ease. It’ll even open MKV files, though don’t expect them to be playable on anything less than an iPhone 4. Absolutely essential for long train and plane journeys.
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