So how do you choose? Thousands upon thousands of applications available at a tap of a finger and an Apple ID, but you still can’t decide which apps will end up in your iPhone’s very limited “Essentials” folder. Not many applications pop to mind to carry the title of the “Essential App”, and that’s rightly so. It takes time and experimentation to figure out which app exactly will make the top 7. I could have expanded the list to top 10, or top 20. Even top 50 essential apps. Only narrowing the collection to a mere 7 application, however, will yield the true top 7.
1. Poynt – Free
First on the list is the app that does it all. It uses a very convenient location based search to browse through movies, restaurants, people, businesses and it will tell you how cold or hot it is. The most useful application when you are out and about and don’t really know where you are. All of this done through a beautifully designed user interface.
2/3. Facebook & Twitter – Free
The inseparable couple. You need them both. Unfortunately, due to the limitation of the iPhone operating system you cannot have them both at the same time. The day will come, don’t you worry. For now, they are available individually both with continuous improvements to the design, localization and functionality of the apps.
4. Goodreader – $2.99
If you are the kind of individual that wants more out of your iPhone than music, games and text messaging, perhaps catch yourself thinking “How great would proper file management on this iPhone be” then you’re in luck. Goodreader is miles and miles ahead of any other file management application out there. The three dollars it costs will pay for themselves countless times. With absolutely essential features such as Wi-Fi file transfer, zipping and unzipping files, viewing and annotating PDFs, saving attachments and connecting to servers (FTP, mail, etc) it is a must-have app for any business oriented individual.
5. Mail Notifier – $0.99
So you just sold your Blackberry Bold and got an iPhone. Now you’re thinking, “Wow, email sucks on this thing.” Yes, yes it does. But there are ways to make it better. Mail Notifier is essential if you want to get the most out of push email on the iPhone. At the cost of one dollar, and a yearly subscription of $3.99 it seems a little bit pricy, but the reliability and confidence of knowing you have mail when you receive it is well worth the money in my opinion.
6. Shazam – Free
Very simple yet very effective when it comes to knowing that tune on the radio. Great features such as “Tag” on start-up and geo-tagging enhance the experience. Only downside is that tags are limited to only 5 per month. Unfortunately, to enjoy unlimited tags you will have to dish out 6 bucks, which seems a little pricy for an app that doesn’t do much other then give you a name of the song, artist and album. With that aside, however, Shazam is a must have application for any music lover.
7. Weather Eye – Free
Although there are plenty of weather applications out there, they are all either too complicated to use or simply incapable of predicting already inaccurate weather forecasts. Weather Eye just seems to have all the essentials, such as current, short-term and long-term forecasts, amount of snow and rain fall expected and even shows sunrise and sunset times. All of this at a cost of zero dollars, it’s a great bargain. The only down side, however, is that it is not yet properly equipped for the iPhone 4’s Retina display.