In an earlier post I wrote about how I promised you all an iPhone App review, so without further waiting, here it is. In this review I will be skipping any apps that also appear on my iPad, as I’ve pretty much exhaustively covered those apps, unless the iPhone brings a fresh perspective that I didn’t have with my iPad. Just so that everyone is on the same page, my iPad is a 16GB Wifi only model, and the first generation. My iPhone is also a 16GB model and linked to Verizon, it’s fourth generation. On with the show…

iPhone 4 App Review

1. Evernote – The recently updated Evernote app is without a doubt one of the single most awesome and compelling apps on my iPhone. The new interface works so much better than the previous iteration of the app on the iPhone device. I am patiently waiting for this kind of refreshing redesign to happen for the Evernote for iPad app as well. Every time I open Evernote, I can’t help but think back to struggling with the very same app on my old Blackberry. The difference? Night and Day.
2. Photography Group
   1. Camera – The baked in Camera app for the iPhone 4 comes with the device. The controls are very easy and it was a definite pleasure to see that the app does stills and video, and can be configured for either camera, the front-facing or rear-facing.
   2. Camera+ – This app borrows a lot of structure from the plain Camera app. It has a different zoom feature, timed shutter, burst mode, advanced flash handling and a pretty neat focus-fixing gesture system which I’ve yet to really get into. The app also has it’s own “Camera Roll” beyond the plain system one, and this allows you to edit the photos, crop them and apply some pretty cool filters. You can of course export any photos you take from the apps “Camera Roll” to the system “Camera Roll”, so it’s quite handy.
   3. Panorama – I haven’t really gotten a chance to play around with this one, it was free, eventually I’ll get to trying it out.
   4. Instagram – The collision of social media and photography! This app is great. You can configure Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Flickr, Tumblr, and FourSquare all from the app itself. Take a picture, apply one of its old-timey filters if you want, and then send the photo at once to all the services or specific ones you choose. So far very happy with it.
   5. FoodSpotting – This is more niche than Instagram. It works a lot like Instagram but it’s for food in restaurants. You take a picture and you can share it. The only gripe I have about FoodSpotting is the setup for the social services aren’t very clear, it’s nothing like any other app I’ve used and I kept on hitting my head against a mysterious login box until I realized I had to put in my FoodSpotting.com username and password. Oops. Once it’s off the ground, it’s very handy.
3. Utilities Group –
   1. Clock – The clock app is one of those baked-in apps that come with the device. I almost never review the baked in apps, except for this one case. There appears to be a gremlin that still lives in this app. I have a handful of alarms, and whether the alarm is on or off doesn’t matter. So far it doesn’t suffer from the previous problem of “alarm doesn’t fire”, but it’s odd in that alarms fire even if they are “Off”. I think this app is still a work-in-progress for Apple’s iOS team to work on.
   2. Voice Memos – This app still has a use for really long audio recordings. It’s lost a fair amount of power when Evernote redid their app and added audio recording – so you could technically audio-record right into your Evernote system. I suppose you could use this app and then email the audio into Evernote later, perhaps it’s six and one half-dozen kind of thing.
4. Facebook – The Facebook app is odd. It’s there for the iPhone but not the iPad. I’ll never understand that. The app works well enough, it’s pretty straightforward and if you have a facebook account, you should get it. I don’t know many people who don’t have a facebook account any longer.
5. Social Group
   1. Glympse – I wrote about Glympse when I had it on my iPad. The system really shines when you have a 3G network connection or if you insist on running it on the iPad, to have a 3G-to-Wifi bridge as you are mobile. I used Glympse with my mother and she loved it. She thought it was really neat. You send a “glympse” to an email addressee and they get a link they can click on and see your position, speed, and path in real-time. The only part of this app that irks me is the expiration to “glympses”. I would prefer to hand my mother a link that would always work if I was running “Glympse” on my iPhone, she would know where I am whenever she liked. Some people see this as an invasion of privacy, but really, what do you have to hide? Come on.
   2. Bump – I got this free app to share some pictures that Scott had on his iPhone. Bump works well when the datasets are small. If you want to share a LOT of data, like a bunch of pictures in a Camera Roll on the device, prepare for disappointment. Bump really didn’t work out for me. Another app, which I reviewed on my iPad, called Transfer works much better for moving big data sets between iOS devices.
6. Travel Group –
   1. Trapster – Before the price of fuel went to obnoxiously high levels I used to have a relatively leaded foot when it came to driving. I regularly find myself pushing 76 in a 70 zone and I’ve been caught “Not Paying Full Attention” to speed zones in the past. This app allows you to share socially the presence of speed traps and other road hazards. Since I keep my speed now pretty much below 60MPH to save on gas costs most of the reason to use this app have gone out the window, but I keep it around, it’ll likely be really helpful on long-duration trips.
   2. StreetPilot – Garmin’s Nuvi interface designed for iOS. I can enter in an address or do a Google Location search and have yet to find something it can’t route me to. This app has vocal turn-by-turn directions and is as “helpful” as a Nuvi. One of the nicest things is that the maps will never go out of date as it downloads map data from Garmin automatically. When I start this app my mind goes back to the Sprint Navigation app on my Blackberry, powered by Telenav. This app, StreetPilot, blows that old Telenav application out of the water. Again it’s night and day. I would never use the Telenav junk because it never worked. So far StreetPilot has not let me down once. Again it’s because an iPhone is a supremely more advanced and better-equipped phone than the Blackberry could ever dream of being.
   3. TripIt – Making big trips, with airplanes and hotels usually is handled somewhat well using Evernote, but not any longer. TripIt is a free app and free web service that enables you to organize all your travel details through one very well designed app. What really blows my mind is the web service provides you with an email address that you can forward your confirmation emails to and the service will automatically extract the details from what you forwarded and populate your trip for you. Incredibly handy. The fact that it’s free blows my mind.
7. 1Password – I have this app on my iPad, my iPhone and every Mac I own. Without a doubt the single BEST purchase and BEST investment I ever made, beyond buying into the Apple Digital Lifestyle. What makes it shine? Sync with Dropbox. Everything is the same on every device. Everyone should buy apps from 1Password, then use the app to change each site they have an account on with the random generator in 1Password and control them all from that suite of apps. When one site suffers a security breakdown, your loss is microscopic. You lost 1 of thousands of 16 digit random passwords. This app is worth its weight in GOLD. I’m so happy my mother pushed me towards it!
8. Business Group
   1. DraftPad – If ever you needed just a quick place to jot down some text, this app does a pretty good job. It’s free, it’s very simple to use, and does one thing, taking quick temporary notes, very well.
   2. CamCard – I downloaded the Lite version of this app. It enables your phone to take a picture of a business card and then it scans in the details, does OCR, and populates your Contact List with the details from the card. Very useful. I got the Lite version because I almost never get business cards but when I do, it’s nice to have this as an option.
9. Scanners Group
   1. Qrafter – This app from Kerem Erkan is free on the App Store and is the BEST QR Code scanner I’ve ever had the pleasure to use. It’s professional, free, and the way it scans, presents the contents of the scan and all the extended features that it can pick up from a QR code is wonderful! There are a few other QR scanners and they are okay, but this one is the top of my list without a doubt!
   2. QR Creator – Kerem Erkan, on his website, also has a QR creator page which has a special mobile rendering on iPhone devices. I browsed to it in Mobile Safari and then made an app-icon-bookmark. You can create custom QR codes and save them to your Camera Roll and print them using AirPrint or send them to someone else via email or even Evernote or Dropbox! Quite nice.
   3. PriceCheck – This app from Amazon.com is a great way to check on local stores profiteering. Just grab an object from the shelf, open this app, scan the bar code with the camera and Amazon will spit out it’s best prices for that item. I’ve yet to use it for more than simply checking on things to see how the scanner worked, but it does work. I’m pretty sure you can one-click order through the App if you set it up with your Amazon login information. That would be too-funny. Especially for Best Buy, Target, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Low prices my ass. 🙂
   4. RedLaser – This works a lot like PriceCheck but isn’t tied to Amazon.com. I have used this app and it’s saved both of us some money and aggravation. There is a scented candle that Scott really likes in the bathroom and it’s a big one, the price tag from BB&B was $22 bucks. He wanted another candle just like it for the bathroom but couldn’t remember what it was called or who made it. While I was in the bathroom I fished it out of the garbage and scanned it using RedLaser. Not only did it find the right make and scent but also found it online for HALF THE PRICE. I then tapped the option button in RedLaser and right there was “email this info” option, I sent it to Scott and minutes later he was thanking me. Don’t thank me, thank that app! 🙂
   5. Color ID – I have what I regard as accurate color vision. Scott on the other hand can from time to time run into trouble identifying colors. This free app is cute, you start it, point the camera at an object and press the shutter button. The phone will calculate the color, give you its “creative name”, its hex code for inclusion on websites, and it will read the color off via voice from the speaker. I spent half an hour identifying all the colors in my bathroom. For anyone challenged with color blindness, this app is a godsend. The only oddity with the app is that it doesn’t like being sent to the background. Once you put it in the background and then call it up again the scanning part doesn’t work. You have to quit the app and restart it. Even with this oddity it’s still quite useful.
10. GroceryIQ – This app is sort of a scanner, sort of a listmaker, but it floats outside of other groups because it’s different. I like using this app more than ShopShop because the way it’s designed fits better with trips to the supermarket. I love it’s listmaking and check off features. The scanner is quite dumb, and while you can scan an item and put it on the list, it’s just as easy to type it in by hand.

So that’s that. Those are the apps on my iPhone that differ from my iPad apps. It’s nowhere near the exhaustive list of all the apps I have, but these are the ones I felt warranted the most discussion and I think other people would benefit from using. I’m open to reviewing other apps, if you are an app developer please feel free to drop me a line or make a comment and I’ll check out your app and give you my honest opinion or even a review. If you find something in my reviews that helps you, please comment and let me know!