17 Best iPhone Hidden Gems From Five Months Of Searching
by Ian
September 24, 2009
Sudoku Grab, GPush, Kayak, Simplify Music 2, Simplenote, Mover+ and Mover, Newsstand, Face The Music, Facehack, Dial Zero, Dictionary.com, vSNAX, Peephole, The Moron Test, Read It Later Pro and Read It Later Lite, Pocket Tanks Deluxe and Pocket Tanks Free, Cooliris, Blackjack Live, Flight Control, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, Touch Hockey: FS5, SportsTap, Textfree Unlimited, BeejiveIM, Occasions, Prowl, Bounce On, iReverse Speech, Todo, Evernote, Love Art: National Gallery, London, iCreated, Mapquest 4 Mobile, Howcast, Twinkle, Pixelpipe, DoGood, Global Impact, AppConnect, 1Password, UP, Toobz, Geek Test, Snatch, Scary Castles, THI Personal Trainer, Excuse Me, i.TV, Now Playing, TapDefense, Addictive Yawn Starter, HiCalc, HiCalc Lite, ContactGo, Magic Compass Trick, Epicurious, myWirelss Mobile on AT&T, GoSkyWatch Planetarium, Go SatWatch, PocketMeter, Fluid, Air America Radio, Yelp, Biplane, Ghost Sweep, Wundrbar, Wunder Radio, Chopper Lite, Have 2Eat, Have2Drink, Have2Snack, Have2P, Lux Touch and Lux DLX, iDracula and iDracula Lite, iGem and iGem Lite, Besiegement, Pano, Scrabble, Vocoder Lite.I've tested and brought you these apps because there are so many in the App Store that it's impossible for you to try them all out. I've considered it my job to do that for you and perhaps discover and bring to you a cool app you've never heard about. No small part of that has been with the help of the commenters who are in the same boat searching for cool apps to try. 9 times out of 10, if a commenter mentions it I'll later try it out. Thank you guys and gals for all your help. Looking back on this list I'm overcome by a huge realization. Not many of these apps have stayed on my phone. It's just the nature of apps, I guess, that they don't have a very long lifespan unless they're absolutely awesome and the developers keep the updates coming. I thought it time to give you the best apps I've discovered so far in this column. All are well tested and I vouch for them because I use many of them regularly. A couple caveats though. There still might be apps that fit your needs slightly better and there are also other apps not on this list that are great too. Hidden gems has always been about telling you about apps you might have missed and I doubt many have missed the Facebook app, for example.
GPush
While Google finally got on the bandwagon this week and joined the push email party with MobileMe and Yahoo, I still enjoy the pop-ups of GPush. With GPush you get a pop up with the sender and subject of the email the instant it hits your inbox. It has saved me a ton of time and brings email just that much closer to SMS.Kayak
Saved me literally hundreds of dollars looking for hotels to stay at. No brainer, get it.NoteSpark
I recommended Simplenote in hidden gems but I really should go back and revise because I didn't realize NoteSpark existed at the time. A commenter pointed it out to me and I agree with him. John Gruber, who recommended Simplenote, can go suck it. NoteSpark features truly flawless syncing that holds up to very rigorous use. It also features great sharing features that let you optionally receive a push notification when someone makes a change to your note. People have been raving recently about another competitor, Awesome Note, and the app does sport a great look as well as the super cool ability to import and export individual Google Documents and notes into and out of the app.
Unfortunately, that just isn't quite the perfect solution. That feature will be helpful in a pinch but flawless two-way syncing with Google Docs is really the way it should work. That's the way NoteSpark works with its web app. In fact, the reason I like NoteSpark so much is it essentially brings the collaborative features of Google Docs to the iPhone.
Cooliris
Still the best image search on iPhone. A pleasure to use and fast.Sportacular
It beat out SportsTap for best free score notification app because it has more customization. In a couple months though, who knows what app will be best.Textfree Unlimited
Textfree Unlimited saved me from those terrible monthly text message fees. I praise them for it. Still, there is a very serious threat to Textfree Unlimited in the form of Google Voice and other competitors. I love Textfree, but Google Voice gives you a real number to use and hand out to people that rings all of your phone numbers. In addition to a ton of other great features, Google Voice also gives you unlimited text messages. Unfortunately for Textfree, lots of folks can't figure out how to send a message to the Textfree Unlimited email address you get. Alas, Google Voice recently released the ability to forward SMS messages to gmail and reply to them from email.
I'm darn close to going Google Voice all the way, especially when combined with GPush, which provides a pop up of incoming email so it looks just like Textfree or Apple's Messages app. It makes sense, really, to marry SMS to email and Google Voice is extremely close to pulling it off flawlessly. The day that happens will be the day text messages die.
