iPhone News Updated

16 free iPhone apps you can’t live without

16 free iPhone apps you can’t live without

Power up your iPhone without spending a thing. Here’s our pick of the best free apps on offer

For us, the launch of the iPhone 3G was less about the hardware tweak than it was about the App Store. Finally, Apple had opened up the iPhone platform to allow developers to create proper, native apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, and we couldn’t wait to get installing.

The great thing about third-party apps is that you can do more than install them on an iPhone 3G; all first-generation iPhones can install them too, courtesy of the free 2.0 firmware upgrade. Even if you have an iPod touch you can get the 2.0 firmware upgrade, though it’ll cost you £5.99. Some apps won’t work on the touch, but that’s usually only because they mandate a feature – speakers, mic, camera, GPS, say – that the iPod touch lacks.

Buying and installing apps is easy. You can browse or search the store through iTunes 7.7 or later on your Mac or PC, or use the App Store tool that you’ll find on your iPhone itself. Apps bought in this latter way are backed up to your Mac at the next sync, and bug fixes and other upgrades are pushed through the iTunes Store ready for almost seamless updating. One weird thing with iPhone apps is that there’s rarely a manual included. Some don’t need it – they’re so simple and intuitive – and some do it much better with pop-ups and other inline tips, but for a few the lack of a help system is annoying.

A final thing to note is that because the Push Notification Server – Apple’s middle-man technology that will allow developers to push notifications directly to the iPhone, obviating the need for apps to run in the background – wasn’t launched at the same time as the App Store, some of the apps that would benefit from it – Twitterific, NetNewsWire and Facebook, say – aren’t as useful as they could be. What follows, then, is our pick from the applications available when the App Store launched. We’ve missed out a few of the very big hitters either because at the time of writing they were only available in the States, because they’re designed for very niche groups, or simply because we thought others were more deserving of a spot in the limelight.

AIM

No iPhone-native version of iChat yet, but in the meantime this AOL IM client is very good. It’s limited – you can only add one account, and it’s restricted to AIM and .Mac/MobileMe sign-ins – but it’s simple and slick. You can have multiple chats on the go at once, and any groups set up in iChat are replicated on the iPhone.

Facebook

Facebook’s iPhone optimised website is one of the best around, so we had high hopes for the native application. It’s certainly faster than the web app, and it feels slicker and more consistent with the iPhone’s user interface. While the very first release lacked a few features that many regarded as essential – no way to write on walls, or see users’ photos, things the web app were perfectly capable of – the quickly-released 1.1 version of the app added in these and more. There’s a dedicated photo capture button that can upload your photos directly to Facebook, too, and of course you can now upload photos that you’ve taken previously. Once the Push Notification Server is rolled out, this will get even better, especially with Facebook Chat.

Evernote

There are a few glitches and usability tweaks, but this is a great free app with clever tech behind it. At its heart it’s just an online notes service. Every note (uploaded to Evernote’s servers, not stored locally) is accessible from any internet-connected computer in the world, including your iPhone. You can set up multiple notebooks and tag notes. You can also use your iPhone’s camera to grab (geotagged) photo notes; when uploaded, any text is recognised with OCR so you can search for stuff you’ve snapped later!

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire is the best overall RSS reader for the Mac, and now that it’s free there’s no reason not to use it to stay up to date. This iPhonenative release is a good basic app. There’s no way to add new RSS feeds; instead the list of feeds you’re subscribed to is pulled down from the Newsgator servers (we don’t mind this, but an update will be welcome for many). Read items hang around for a bit, but unread posts are easy to identify. There’s a mini Safari built in, so you don’t have to constantly be bouncing back and forward between NNW and Safari to read full posts.

Tap Tap Revenge

If you know Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, this will feel familiar. It’s nowhere near as sophisticated, but it’s nevertheless fun. The idea is that you tap along to the beat of a song, tapping the correct point in the screen where the bubbles dropping down the three coloured strings hit the bottom of the screen. There are four different difficulty levels, but even the easy level proved tricky enough for us. On the single-player mode, as well as tapping the screen you have to shake the phone left/right and up/ down. The two-payer mode is great fun too, as you’re given targets at either end of the screen for two players to tap on; the iPhone 3G’s curved back means it rattles a bit too much on the tabletop, but the first-generation model is just fine!

Remote

This free Apple app is a remote control for iTunes and Apple TV, and very nice it is too. Once you’re running iTunes 7.7, just launch Remote on your iPhone. As long as they’re connected to the same network, click on the iPhone entry under Devices in the iTunes sidebar; now just enter a four-digit passcode, and you’re connected!

PhoneSaber

There’s probably too much space here to tell you about this app’s single feature, but the PhoneSaber is just too cool for us to relegate to the bottom of the page! In a nutshell, this is a Star Wars-esque lightsaber for your iPhone. Tap to pick a light colour – though, as MacFormat’s resident film expert Alex pointed out, the handle doesn’t change – then whirl your iPhone around. The accelerometer picks up its relative position, resulting in lifelike whuummwhuuuum noises, and there’s a lovely clashing sound when you stop it suddenly. Hold tight!

Twitterrific

Twitter client Twitterific can be a little sluggish, it doesn’t make as much use of the iPhone’s location awareness as Twinkle, and the free version features (acceptable and unobtrusive) ads, but it gets our vote because it’s so very polished. It looks beautiful, there’s lots of attention to detail, and the inline help system is superb. We love the inline browser, so tapping on URLs doesn’t bounce you out to Safari, and you can get info on your Twitter friends. There’s no background notification obviously, but that’ll be killer when it’s rolled out. An ad-free version costs £5.99.

Banner Free

Yes, it’s a bit of a silly idea, but download it anyway because you never know when it might come in handy. Tap in a message and the app will scroll it across the screen, LED-style, in a continuous loop. The only downside we can see with this is that as you’re holding your iPhone above your head to send a message to your friends across a noisy bar, you’re very clearly advertising that you have a very nice phone in your possession, just ripe for the nicking…

eReader

The iPhone isn’t such a great ebook reader as, say, Amazon’s Kindle; the screen is a little small and it draws a lot of battery power. But if these don’t put you off, eReader is the app for you. It’s the same system that you might have used on a Palm, but here there’s an added benefit. If you’ve already bought books from eReader, you can access your digital library directly from within the eReader app on your iPhone. Downloading your books just takes a few taps, and the display can be customised.

Exposure

If you’re a Flickr user, this is the app for you. Though we’re featuring the free version here – supported by the same ads system that Twitterific uses – an ad-free version is available for £5.99. With Exposure, not only can you browse your Flickr library but also those of your contacts. You can search, use tags, sets, favourites and more. There’s no uploading (yet), but it’s like having a huge photo album in your pocket. It can also show you photos geotagged as being taken near your location.

Last.fm

Last.fm is a bit of a phenomenon, and since here in the UK we’re denied the apparently superb Pandora app for our music streaming, Last.fm will have to do. It’s not a problem, though, as Last.fm is very good. Give it an artist name and it will stream music from him, her or them and – this is the clever bit – similar artists. It’s generally very good at finding similar artists, and it offers lots of additional information – such as tour dates and tags – and the ability to buy and share new discoveries.

Midomi

The idea is laudable: sing a bit of a song, type in its name or hold your iPhone up to a speaker playing some music and, as if by magic, Midomi will tell you what the song is. You can then tap to listen to an excerpt, look for related videos on YouTube or buy the track directly though the iTunes Store. It was easily tripped up, though, and while it had no trouble identifying Elton John, Queen or Amy Winehouse, what’s the point of it being able to identify very famous tracks? Things will improve, we hope.

Othello

The classic game of swapping game pieces from white to black gets an iPhone makeover here. It’s not the only Othello/Reversi-style game on the store, but it gets our vote because it feels well put-together and it has some pretty good AI playing against you. We’d like to see a twoplayer mode – even if it’s not over the WiFi or internet; just some way to allow two players to compete on the same board – but it’s a good start. Now we just need to get good at Othello.

Talking Phrasebooks

Available in French, German, Italian and Spanish, these handy phrasebooks give you some essential lingo to get by abroad. They’re not as polished or extensive as some paid-for offerings – the Lonely Planet ones look particularly promising, and the Mandarin edition is free – but they’re pretty good nonetheless. You’re not just limited to text either; each phrase has a native speaker saying it so you can either practise or just hold your phone up and have it speak for you.

WeatherBug

If you crave a little more detail in your Dashboard than Apple’s own Weather app gives you, WeatherBug could be for you. It seems to have trouble finding a local weather station for some locations, but when it has locked on you get very up-to-date information and forecasts. It’s definitely a US-centric app, though; we couldn’t find any way to switch from Fahrenheit, and the satellite pictures provided are no more specific than the whole of Europe. Still, it’s free.

Read the full article, which also features a selection of must-have paid-for apps, in issue 199 of MacFormat magazine, out now.

By Christopher Phin