tl;dr

A few people have been asking me lately for iPhone app recommendations — it’s almost like I have a reputation as some sort of evangalist. I have no idea why. Anyway, here is what I’ve been telling them. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but is simply a list of the first apps I would reinstall if I had to rebuild my iPhone tomorrow.

All links will open the application up in iTunes. Unless otherwise noted, these apps are free.

My personal must-have apps:

• Facebook — a pretty well-written app, and beats using the mobile site, but it is slightly buggy (notably, all my friends status updates always seem to be “8 hours ago”).
• Darkslide — Flickr client. Very featureful, and with comprehensive uploading support.
• Tweetie — amazing Twitter client that shows up even most of the desktop clients as lacking features. £1.79 at time of writing, and well worth it if you use Twitter at all. Free alternatives: Twittilator, Twitterific, Twitterfon. Update: my preferred app these days is Twitterrific Pro, although Tweetie remains a good choice.
• BeejiveIM — very nice IM client, but rather pricey at £9.49 unless you plan to use mobile IM a lot — I bought it on sale for £6. Does a clever thing: its own servers keep your IM account logged in and send you an email if someone IMs you, skirting the no-background-apps limitations of the iPhone. Free alternative: Palringo.
• TruPhone – VOIP app. Good for calling internationally, or 0800s or 0870s, without getting ripped off. There’s also a Skype client.
• Stanza — excellent eBook reader, with a baked-in bookshop including free access to tens of thousands of books from Wikibooks and Project Gutenberg.
• Showtimes — a location-aware cinema times app (i.e. it looks up cinemas around you). Seems decent enough to me, but I’ve been recommended the alternative Flixster; you might like to try both.
• WordPress — a pretty featureful client for writing posts on any Wordpress blog, either on wordpress.com or self-hosted.

Other apps to consider, but which I don’t use much myself:

• Shozu — a social networking client that allows cross-posting text or images to multiple places — for example, you can take a picture, and upload it to flickr, Facebook, and your own blog in a few easy steps.
• MyRail Lite – live departures board for train stations. Now been forced offline by Railtrack, but keep an eye out in case it comes back.
• Remote — allows the iPhone to become a remote control for any iTunes software on your network.
• Simplify (£2.39) – stream the contents of your home PC’s iTunes library to your phone, over WiFi or cellular data. Works well, but I don’t leave a PC on at home and my entire library fits on my iPhone, so not of much use to me.
• Air Sharing Pro (£5.99) — one of a large number of apps that let you move files on and off the iPhone over WiFi. Works well, but pricey; there are cheaper alternatives but I cannot recommend any of them particular.

Apps I’ve been recommended but haven’t used:

• ComicZeal (£1.19) — a comic viewer. I note that can consume all sorts of files (cbr, cbz, zip, rar), which I suspect are availabe from the usual internet hives of scum and villainy. I suspect that’s the main point.
• Urbanspoon – location based food finder that looks up where you are and shows you restaurant reviews. Doesn’t seem to have any data out here in the sticks, but you city boys might have more luck.

Webapps for your Safari bookmarks (these are web links, not iTunes ones):

• Train Times — iPhone-optimised live train routing and timetabling app. Good alternative to MyRail Lite.
• Several websites have well-designed mobile versions, including Flickr, Facebook, and Google Reader.
• Safari+ — special bookmarks which, when accessed, do things like scroll to the bottom of the page, open links in a new window, and solve other little annoyances Safari has.

Games I like:

• GeoDefense (£1.19) — brilliant fixed-path tower defense game, with perfect (though hard) difficulty level. There’s a free lite version if you want to try it out.
• GeoDefense Swarm (59p currently, £1.19 soon) — an open-map tower defense game, sequel of sorts to the previous entry. Also excellent (and sometimes infuriatingly difficult).
• Civilization Revolution (£2.99) — an almost perfect port of the Nintendo DS version of the game (which sells for £30!). Has a free lite version too.

Tech, iPhone

Seconds after I took the photo of Jake, he decided to get up (he doesn’t seem to like having his picture taken); Daisy lept onto the bed and promptly claimed it.

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