@FrancoJTorres

Cream of the iCrop

They’re all good in their own way. These are the top iPhone apps installed on my phone; a whole screen’s worth of them.

Angry Birds and Cut the Rope continue to be the best games on iOS, at least in my opinion. I haven’t even finished them, but they’re loads of fun. Path is the best app you’re not using. A beautifully designed social networking app that I hardly use -mainly because non of my friends are on it, it has some camera filters that rival Instagram. I honestly think this would be this year’s runner-up for app of the year. Facebook is essential, it’s not great, but it’s a must have no matter how good or bad it is. It’s like email 2.0.

Skype allows you to make video calls over both wi-fi and 3G. Most people don’t even know you can do that. But you can using Skype. Instagram is the hottest app right now. Taking pictures has never been this much fun. Camera+ is another photo editing app that can be used as a replacement for the iPhone’s built-in camera app. You can take a photo using Camera+, edit it, and then send it to Instagram.

If Instagram was last year’s best iPhone app, this year’s best has to be Flipboard. It’s the best magazine app around. Not only can you add feeds from your favorite news blogs, you can also add feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, among others. I actually prefer browsing said feeds on Flipboard.

Wikipedia is good to have around. With over 22 million articles in over 280 languages, you can find information on just about any topic you can think of. With this app in the palm of your hand, you have access to more knowledge than the president of the US did just 20 years ago. Red Laser is another useful app that can come in handy. It scans consumer products’ bar codes and tells you the cost and where you can buy them locally. Sweet. Also useful is Converter+. It converts liters to gallons, years to hours, and other units of measure. It can also give you current currency exchange rates and calculates loan payments.

One of my favorite apps is Square. With it, I can accept credit card payments from anyone using a free credit card reader. So there’s no longer an excuse for people who owe me money. That whole, “all I got is a credit card” excuse doesn’t work with me. Onavo Extend is a great app for those of us who have limited data plans. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it saves me money on data usage by compressing it or something or other.

MotionX GPS Drive is a good turn-by-turn navigation app. Since Apple hasn’t added one built-in to iOS, something like this will have to do. When I’ve used it, it has done a fine job at giving me directions. Evernote is the best note-taking app out there. It syncs with desktop, web and tablet versions so it’s very useful when you’re constantly on the go. DropBox is similar to Evernote and is also one of my favorites. It installs a folder in your laptop, phone or tablet and keeps its contents in sync. Any kind of documents will work; photos, word docs, you name it. You can even email them right from your phone. It’s also a great place for backing-up documents to the cloud. 

So there you have it. I have 59 apps installed on my phone and these are the 16 best, most useful apps I have. Cheers.