StarDestroyer.Net BBS

So I've got an iPhone 3G now, but only have a couple apps, including two bar-code scanners that only work sometimes, soundhound the free version, iBooks, facebook, foursquare, and a app that graphs my battery power. I've decided that I need more apps and I've got $15 of iTunes store cash to spend.

So, recommend me some apps.

Godville

What do you want to do?

Stark wrote:What do you want to do?

That is part of my problem, I'm not quite sure what I want from this because my previous experience with smart phones has been three or four year old blackberries.

I would like some good games to kill the time (I only have Angry Birds right now), I'd like some functional apps that enhance features that the phone should have. For instance, I'd kill for a decent "To Do List" app that didn't make me use the calendar function (though all the to-do apps I can seem to find cost a fair chunk of change relative to what I'd expect to be a standard feature of the phone.) Beyond that I'm not sure just yet what I'm looking for, and the few times I have been sure what I was looking for the iTunes store proved to be a huge bitch to navigate through.

I guess, the underlying question here is what apps do you find useful, and why?

Regarding games, most have demos or are obviously good/bad. The 'functions that should have been standard' app types are a matter of taste, I think.

I just use a few games (generally free or $1) and a few photo apps.

Okay, list of games that I enjoy:

Rolando and Rolando II (It's Mario. With physics. Great soundtrack, fun game.)
Dungeon Hunter 1 and 2 (It's Diablo mini. With loot. Will kill any Diablo cravings while you wait)
Hero of Sparta 1 and 2 (God of War mini, right down to the quicktime events)
N.O.V.A. (HALO mini)
Galaxy on Fire (Freespace mini)
Eliminate Pro (It's...It's a multiplayer FPS...you get what you pay for, it's free, but considering the platform it's incredible)
Final Fantasy 1 (yeah, it really is)
Final Fantasy 2 (yeah, it really is)

Also possibly Enigmo, Graal, Knight's Rush, Tiki Towers, Zenonia, Sim City, Oregon Trail, and Godfinger. You can look at Gangstar if you need to see what a simple GTA clone looks like.

Things to look at on the horizon: Infinity Blade, Eternal Legacy, NOVA 2 (see trailers, YouTube)

Puzzle Quest 2 is surprisingly decent on the iOS. You can also get Phoenix Wright if you missed it the first time around.

Depending on your interests, you will find some of the following very useful. They are also free:

Stanza is an excellent e-reader and the desktop application will let you use pretty much any format out there. I believe you can now add files directly via iTunes, as well.

Words With Friends is Scrabble for the iPhone. Play against random opponents, challenge a friend, or pass it between two people. There's a free version.

Planets is like Google Earth, for the sky. It uses the compass for the 2D map, and has a pretty sweet 3D map as well. Let's you see what's up there in different wavelengths, and has a pretty useful Visibility indicator that shows your local day/night and also the rise and set times of the Sun, Moon, and planets.

ScanLife is the best barcode reader I've found so far. It's a lot better than the others, and is the version recommended by the National Post for their QR codes. Read my passport application's QR code off my monitor with no problems.

YellowPages app is hella useful.

Flixster is good for finding movies nearby, gives Rotten Tomatoes scores in the app.

PS Express is a simple image editor. Useful for cropping on the go.

OnTheFly by ITA software is fucking awesome. It uses the same system that travel agents use and lets you price out flights over multiple airlines with a lot of options. Put your preferred travel agency's number in the settings and you can call the airline direct or your travel agent from within the app to book the flights. Much easier to use and compare flights than going to the websites.

Skype is also very useful, especially if you travel. My cousin uses it a lot, and uses it to call home when out of country. Free airport WiFi + a few dollars on your account = lots of cheap talk.

The Formula 1 app is nice if you watch the races live, since it gives you the Live Timing information for every race and qualifying session.

Consume lets you track your usage on heaps of stuff, like 3G plans or phones or internet or whatever, for gajillions of service providers worldwide.

Peggle's iOS port is also excellent. I played it on my coworker's iPod Touch 4G, and I can only hope the Android version Popcap has in the works is just as good.

You've already got Angry Birds, the first thing I was going to suggest. If you like, you can pick up Angry Birds Seasons for the 45 Halloween levels plus 25 Christmas levels.

I'll second Dungeon Hunter, but you missed the promotion like a week ago when they offered the full version for free for a day.

Crush the Castle is a fairly decent port of the Flash game, worth the .99 IMO.

Taxi Magic is a must have if you use taxis a lot. It lets you book a taxi using the cab company's dispatch system, track the cab's progress through dispatch updates and a map view, and even lets you pay via credit card through the app. Best of all, it's free.

I like the radio scanner apps. Great fun to listen to police scanners.

Get the lightsaber app and fight with friends.

Bump is a good app, it lets you share stuff easily between phones. Radio scanner is good too.


If you're willing to jaibreak your phone I'd suggest gettingWiwi 4.0 that allows you to tether internet. There are also a number of SNES, Gameboy, and PS1 emulators for the iPhone.

Tether is already an option? Or does your carrier not allow that?

Some carriers (at least in AU) try to charge you for it.

Hm, lets see what I have on my Touch... I am going to go through them in the way they are sorted on my iPod, also I am leaving out any preinstalled apps and anything already mentioned.

on the "Desktop" itself: Twitter and Meebo should be self-explanatory. Push notifications are a great thing. xkcd is a no frills way to look up xkcd comics.
"Tools" folder: DB Navigator lets me find train and bus connections with accurate shedules for all of Germany's public transport. Yeah, not of much worth to you, but there might be something similar for the US. dict.cc is great if you are desperately trying to find the right english or german word. Once again, its only included to give you an idea of whats available. Remote is an Apple app that lets me use the iPod as a remote control for iTunes. And last but not least, Terminal gives me a shell, which is great since I sometimes need to log onto servers I don't have physical access to. (note however that its a pain in the ass to use.))
"Games" folder: Plants vs. Zombies, Unblock Me, Flight Control are great. I also enjoyed Gravity Sling, Auditorim, Tetravex, Rock Bang and Strategery. (And of course I have a Sudoku app, but the game itself has become boring for me.) Also, there is a ScummVM, if you like SCUMM games.
"Misc" folder: Smart.fm is great if you need to memorize stuff, like vocabulary or japanese symbols. For that purpose I also got Kana Lite. iBraille lets you translate (into) Braille. (The dots you often see in elevators that tell blind people which buttons are which etc.) Google Earth is of course even better than on a normal computer, since you can have a map with you right were you need it.
"Settings etc" folder: Cydia, RockApp and Installous are great for installing apps. Winterboard lets you customize the UI and Categories gives you folders.


I would advise you to just try everything that sounds interesting. (As long as its free, of course. )

I'll add that several of the apps Skgoa mentioned (Cydia, Terminal, Installous, Winterboard, probably RockApp and Categories too) require your phone to be jailbroken. It's nowhere near the pain in the ass as it used to be (now it's basically: Connect iDevice to computer -> Run jailbreak program on computer -> Reboot iDevice into recovery mode -> Done), plus you can undo it if you need to by just doing a recovery from iTunes, so as far as I'm concerned you might as well go for it. I've jailbroken both my coworker's iPods, and he's had no issues related to the jailbreak.

Some apps on my ipod touch:

VLC media player
Tapatalk (does SD net support this?)
Wallpapers HD
Infinity Blade
Rage HD
Samurai 2
CW Gunner
Doodle Jump
Geared
Manga Rock (for reading manga titles)

why have none of you mentioned tilt to live?

Chardok wrote:why have none of you mentioned tilt to live?

Never heard of it? The iPhone has a rather large signal to noise ratio in the apps after all.

Speaking of Tapatalk, who would we need to talk to anymore to add the Tapatalk plugin to the forum? Mike's been abducted by Facebook, as we all know, so he's probably too busy.