A perfectly serviceable alarm clock and timer comes with your Android phone, so you might not think to download another one. That may be true, but if you’re looking for more features, more customization options, and more powerful alarms than your stock clock comes with, Gentle Alarm is here—and we think it’s the best.
Reading comics, particularly on tablets, is a delightful use of bright, vivid touchscreens. If you're a heavy reader and want to bring your own files, Astonishing Comic Reader is a relative newcomer with a ton of slick features.
Our favorite file storage app-shoots files to the iPhone's flash memory via Wi-Fi for storage, transport, and easy retrieval.
Amazon's usually the first place I look during a fit of impulse buying, which their iPhone app now makes stupidly easy.
Terribly violent little casual game, to birds. A terrible addictive little casual game, to humans.
More free radio content than any actual radio could ever have. Tailored radio stations are great, sure, but old-fashioned programmed stations—AOL Radio's specialty—have their charms.
An exceptionally shiny first person shooter optimized for the iPhone 4, with slick, functional controls.
It's the first panorama app I've seen that doesn't limit the image size to the camera size. You can paste together some seriously large photos with this.
Expensive? Sure. Totally essential for messaging hounds? Yup.
Want to use your iPhone, but hate Google? You can sort of do that!
Generative, ambient music by Brian Eno. If I need to say more, it's also a mini-sequencer: Drop your finger on the liquidy pastel screen, play a note, make simple loops. Music For Airports that you can make yourself. In an airport, even.
A lot of people buy Nintendo DSes for the sole purpose of having those Dr. Kawashima-approved brain-training games at hand. With this app, you get the exact same mind-juicing benefits for a few bucks, on hardware you already carry.
If you've ever seen on of those spectacularly detailed "paintings" done on the iPhone, chances are it was created with this. This is fingerpainting in 2009.
There's a lot of overlap in camera apps, so interface and novel features are generally what determine the best. (I like Snapture.) But Camera Plus Pro, already a great alternative camera app, now records video, which it competitors generally don't.
OK, very cool for Chase customers, not quite as cool for everyone else, but the latest update to Chase's app lets you take deposit checks by snapping pictures of them with your iPhone.
You know the App Store needs an overhaul when apps like Chorus, which help you find other apps, are necessary. But alas, they are.
Plenty of apps can technically deal with unit conversions as well as ConvertBot can, but none of them have its fantastic, super-fast interface.
I imagine there's a huge group of people, like me, who don't keep fastidious hour-to-hour calendars on Google or Outlook or whatever but whose days could benefit from a little more organization.
What's the one thing I learned from playing Dreamscape? Popping bubbles is incredibly satisfying, even when those bubbles are fake.
