iPhone App Reviews #2

So I had another app review post, which I’ll link to at the end of the post.

8 Glasses Of Water A Day

Price: Free
This is quite a simple app, which keeps track of how many glasses of water you have had in a day. A recent update came that sticks the number of glasses you have to go on the home screen, similar to Mail or SMS. I don’t know whether there’s any proven health benefits to this, but it can’t hurt.

3/5

AroundMe

Price: Free
This app tracks your current location and tells you what services are around you, as the name suggests. Useless if you don’t travel much, or know what’s about where you travel to, but as I went to Birmingham the other day, I used it to find the closest Starbucks to me, which was handy.

3/5

Dictionary.com

Price: Free
If you’ve not heard of Dictionary.com then you should check it out. I usually use this app for the Word of the Day, and then try to fit it in to conversation that day. Yeah, it’s a geeky thing to do, but oh well.

4/5

Google Mobile App

Price: Free
I use almost all of Google’s services so this is a great app for me, especially when I can’t access my laptop at the time. If you use any of the services above, it would do you good to utilise this app. The only thing I’m a bit disappointed with is that it doesn’t allow me to post any blog posts from there.

4.5/5

Scramble

Price: Free
Scramble is like a fun little word search game, which can be played online or multiplayer as well. Sometimes it’s frustrating when you spot a few good words just before the timer counts down. An adjustable timer with a bigger grid might be more fun.

3.5/5

Tap Tap Revenge 2

Price: Free 
This app is essentially Guitar Hero on the iPhone, and you can download popular songs for free. The difficulty modes are as they should be. Extreme is very unforgiving, and Easy is nice enough for starters. I’ve been told by @benjirino that the actual Guitar Hero app which costs £3.49 is horrible, with covered famous songs that cost money to download. Get Tap Tap Revenge instead.

4/5

Hope you liked this review bunch.
If you make apps, and want them reviewed on this blog, send me a link for them.
If you have any that you’d like to see me review, send me a link again.
If you don’t have an iPhone or an iPod Touch yet, what is wrong with you?

iPhone App Reviews

So, now I've had my iPhone 3G for a couple of months and briefly mentioned some of the apps I had in this post. But now that I've learned how to take screenshots, I'm going to go through all the apps currently on my iPhone.

43 Things
Price: Free
This app is for the users of the website 43 Things and allows them to mark goals as accomplished on their list of things. However it doesn't allow you to go through the "43 Things" process within the app (though it runs Safari within the app to attempt this) so that you can share a story with the community about how you accomplished the goal. Also very crashy.

2.4/5

Backgrounds

Price: Free
A nice free app which updates regularly with backgrounds for your iPhone, which are saved to the Photos folder. Searching brings up a decent amount of results or you can check by popularity. They're all sourced from flickr, so they're fine to use. The occasional advert, which I hope will be removed in a future iteration of the app, but otherwise, it's good.

3/5

BBCNewsReader
Price: Free
A quality app and great for anyone on the go that doesn't have time to check the news. You can edit which RSS feeds the app gets (Europe, Americas etc.) to suit your news needs. The only problem with this is if you're on anything other than 3G or WiFi, the news downloads take ages, and you may as well check on Safari.

3.5/5

BigOven
Price: Free
I think this app was free, but can't remember off the top of my head. I only recently got this app in order to make myself less lazy when cooking. What's good about this, is being able to think of an ingredient, type it in, and seeing what recipes you can use it in. It boasts over 170,000 recipes and doesn't need WiFi to browse the recipes. I always make a shopping list from this app when I want something different.

Thanks to Steve Murch for correcting me, it's now close to 170,000 recipes and is free.

3.9/5

Geocaching
Price: £5.99
If you don't know what Geocaching is, follow this link. £5.99 seems an awful lot for one app and so far (mostly due to floods where I live) I have not got much use out of it. But when it's a warm sunny day, I plan to delve in to the community and hunt down a few caches. The price still annoys me though, knocks it's rating way down. If it were £3 or less, this would be at least a 3/5.

1.5/5

eBay
Price: Free
eBay browsing and everything on your iPhone. Simplistic and easy, need I say more? NEXT!

3.5/5

facebook
Price: Free
facebook on your iPhone, including facebook chat if you use that. It's okay, but I feel there's more they could expand on, such as choosing to like statuses, or updating your information.

3/5

Geohashing
Price: Free
If you don't know what Geohashing is, see here. This app will calculate the day's co-ordinates for you, then launch the Maps app so that you can plan directions to the day's hash. Does exactly what it should. Though a compass wouldn't go a miss in an update.

4.5/5

Google Earth Price:Free
Exactly the same (though lower resolution and no streetview) as the regular Google Earth. If you don't know what Google Earth is, leave right now.

4/5

IM+
Price: 59p (Currently on sale)
This is the full version of IM+ Lite, this version allows you to send photos and be signed in to multiple messaging services at the same time. Very handy if you're out and about and need to reach someone on MSN or AIM.

3.9/5

JellyCar
Price: Free
JellyCar is without a doubt, one of the funnest apps on the iPhone, and recieves a lot of updates with new levels. It's a game that will take you a long time to complete, and has a very fun control system. Get it now.

5/5

last.fm
Price: Free

Obviously for users of last.fm and it was recently advertised on TV, always great for when you want to listen to some new music.

4.7/5

LightBike
Price: £1.79
I actually got this while it was only 59p after trying out the Lite version for free. If you've ever watched Tron or played the Light Bike part in Kingdom Hearts II, you need this game. The updates have made it much more slick since it's humble begginings and WiFi mode seems almost ready to go as well. Get it!

4/5

Ocarina
Price: 59p
This is a close as you'll get to a real instrument on the iPhone and it even has a special "Zeldarian" setting for folk to imitate Ocarina Of Time tunes. I'm trying to play Epona's Song at the moment. A neat feature of this is the world view, where you can hear people playing (not live obviously) and can hear some great melodies from people around the globe.

4.5/5

Rainbow Ninja
Price: Free
This game has a simple mechanism, you either press the colour of the text, or press the colour that it shows you. It's good for a quick game and is free, so enjoy it.

4.3/5

Remote
Price: Free
Wirelessly control iTunes via WiFi through this app. You need this too.

5/5

Stanza
Price: Free
Stanza is for reading books on your iPhone and there's plenty of classics that you can download for free and also newer books that you can pay for. If you can't afford a Kindle yet, get this app in the meantime. Another near-perfect app.

4.7/5

Space Deadbeef
Price: Free
A great side-scrolling ship shooter, which advances steadily in difficulty. Unfortunately it doesn't vary much in types of enemies.

3.8/5

Tower Bloxx 3D Free
Price: Free
In this game, you build a city by dropping blocks down to build towers and increase population. The full version boasts a story, but for £3.49, I'm not going to get it. This free version is also very prone to crashes, so I don't want to pay and then have it still crash. Still decent for quick plays, and I like to build the tower as unstable as possible for added difficulty.

3.5/5

Tweetie
Price: £1.79
After seeing the abysmal Twitterific, I was nervous about paying for Twitter apps, but Tweetie came well recommended. It allows multiple accounts, trends and all the usual stuff. It's only okay, if you only have one Twitter account, use my next app.

3/5

Twitterfon
Price: Free
Twitterfon has a nice blue Twitter-esque interface, allows for trends, and tracks replies and DMs much like SMS's on the phone. If you use Twitter, get this.

4.5/5

Wikipanion
Price: Free
This app makes browsing Wikipedia so much easier and doesn't take long to load. It also allows you to save pictures from Wikipedia pages, which can be handy.

4.5/5

So, that's all the apps that I have, apart from the ones mentioned in the earlier post. If you have any recommendations, let me know.