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Windows Phone 7 Essential Apps, Reviewed

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Windows Phone 7 is out, so we're going to review as many awesome and essential apps as we can, live, updating throughout the day. If you're curious about what Windows Phone, this is the place to really check it out.

Flight Control

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Feels just like the iPhone version.

Facebook

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It's a fairly full-featured, slick iteration of Facebook, but Windows Phone 7ified.

OMG: Our Manic Game

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Ooh, this is like Geometry Wars combined with Ikaruga. Fun! And nice looking.

OpenTable

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The Windows Phone 7 version of OpenTable feels classy, almost as classy as the restaurant you're making a reservation at.

FourSquare

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It'll be good once they worked out the bugs—it's probably my favorite FourSquare version in terms of look and feel.

Flixster

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The classic movies app from iOS and Android, but on Windows Phone 7.

IMDB

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I don't think IMDB has ever looked this good.

Flickr Manager

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A basic Flickr app for uploading photos and checking out your friends' photostream—gets the job done until there's an official Flickr app.

The Harvest

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It may be $7, but it looks like Dungeon Siege (or the lousier Space Siege) on your phone. And that is great times for click-RPG fans.

Netflix

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It's somewhere between barebones and decently featured. It's a lot more thoughtfully designed than say, the iPad Netflix app. You still can't manage your queue. But it works, and it's easyish to use, which is all most people are lookin' for.

Twitter

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The official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 is one of the slickest Twitters apps you can get on any platform, and it's got all of the standard Twitter features you'd expect. Wish it was a little faster, though.

Avatar

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Microsoft combined those crappy $1 apps—flashlight, ruler, level—into one app. Plus, they Avatarized it, so you can play with yourself.

Seesmic

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Diehard Seesmic power users might be a little disappointed in the initial version of the app, which is a little limited in how ridiculous you can get with your social networking, but for most people it's a nice rollup of Twitter and Facebook which'll definitely get more powerful over time.

Shazam

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Tells you what songs playing, of course. But it lets you dip into Zune Marketplace, which is handy combined with a ZunePass.

Yelp

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Yelp has never been so red.

Newsroom

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A nice-looking RSS reader with an even nicer feature: It pulls in full news feeds from pretty much every site you toss at it, even if full feeds aren't the default—like Gizmodo. $2.

The Weather Channel

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A little busy, perhaps, but it is all the weather info you could want in a free app.

Pictures Lab

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Your phone isn't complete until you can take photos that look like they came out of a $5 camera from 1974. Pictures Lab fortunately offers a ton of other effects for your money. $2.

Google Search

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Doesn't do a whole lot right now—just a location-aware search bookmark really.

Wonder Reader

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Your best option for a Google Reader, but it could use some polish—if it hooked up with NewsRoom, we'd have a winner. $2.

I Can Has Cheezburger

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I Can Has Cheezburger, optimized for Windows Phone. It's better than the website, in some ways.

Shopping List

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Skeletal but free shopping list from Microsoft.

AP Mobile

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The only non-British major news app for Windows Phone, it's pretty good, like every other AP application. And hey, it's free.

Zagat

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Like most cross-platform apps, you know what you're getting with the $10 Zagat app—full, location-aware access to Zagat's listings and ratings—but wrapped up in a Windows Phone bow, which happens to be very pretty here.

Last.fm

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Last.FM is your best bet of the major free streaming radio services, since there is no Pandora, and Slacker Radio isn't so hot right now (see below). It's good implementation of last.fm overall, too.

Slacker

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I'm sure after an update or two, Slacker radio will be the streaming music app Slacker fans want. Right now, it's seriously buggy and borders on unusable. This was the best I got it to perform.

Hexic

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I've been looking forward to a good Hexic implementation on phones for a while, and unsurprisingly, nobody does it as well as Hexic themselves. The twisting takes a bit of time to get used to, but it's solid.

History Here

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A neat app by The History Channel for $3, it shows you where historical stuff went down near you, or the address of your choosing.

NYC Subway

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While we wait for a better NYC subway app, this one will do. $1.

IloMilo

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Ilomilo is kind of a platformer, kind of a puzzler, and definitely fun. You try to reunite these two guys by taking control of both, one at a time, and getting around obstacles. It's more exciting than it sounds.