Forget the lightsabers and fake bubble wrap, here are hands-on reviews of the six apps we've been using steadily since the Apple iPhone 3G came out.
When the Apple iPhone 2.0 software was launched, the App Store was the feature that we were most excited about. There were hundreds of iPhone apps at launch, and too much variety could prove to be a serious problem with the Apple iPhone app store. We've checked out almost all of the top software for the Apple iPhone, both free and paid, and after a week of using the iPhone 3G as our primary cell phone, here are the six apps we are really using.
Pandora Media's Pandora Radio app is like a combination of your iPod and satellite-style radio, all in one. To begin, you choose an artist, and Pandora Media builds a radio station around that choice. So, if you choose, say, Beck, you might not hear Beck, not right away, but you'll hear musicians and songs that are similar in style and attitude to Beck's eclectic catalogue. After setting up a few stations, we were instantly hooked. Setting up a Jurassic 5 station, we discovered new music from other smaller hip-hop acts, heard great guest appearances by the Jurassic 5 MCs, and even caught some popular J5 tunes and b-sides that we already knew. We repeated this for some of our more outlandish favorites, including Tori Amos, "Weird" Al Yankovic and even Rockapella.
The system is not without its flaws. The music selection is fantastic, powered by the Music Genome project, and when the music was streaming smoothly, we could hardly tell the difference between Pandora Radio and our regular, compressed iPod tracks. Unfortunately, when network signal dropped out, the music stopped completely, and usually didn't resume properly. We had to stop and start the program often, as we moved out of AT&T's 3G signal range. The app will work on the original iPhone, and we've tested it, but we wouldn't recommend using it with EDGE, as songs usually dropped out before they finished playing.
Our other issue has to do with the way the iPhone refuses to run apps in the background. You cannot play Pandora Radio and surf the Web. You also don't get access to the music player shortcuts that pop up on the standby screen. When your headphones get yanked from the iPhone, Pandora keeps playing. And don't get us started on battery life, since this app hits the 3G radio as hard as it can as long as you're listening. But all these complaints fade away when you're listening to the excellent selection of music, all of which sounds high quality and fresh when the signal is good.
When the restaurant reviewer for the New York Times picks up on your app, you know it's going to catch on. Wanderspot's Urbanspoon is a fun, useful location-based app. It's easy to explain. Shake your phone and Urbanspoon randomly selects a well-regarded restaurant in your area. If those things seem incongruous - shaking, user-generated reviews and location-based search - welcome to the iPhone. Urbanspoon was pretty useful in the couple times we used it this week, and it suggested a nice mix of places we had seen but not tried, as well as old favorites. You can lock in a neighborhood, price range or type of cuisine, and let the phone randomize the rest of your selection process.
What we like best about Urbanspoon isn't just the restaurant selections. We like that from the launch of the App Store, developers are already thinking of new and creative ways to use the location-aware iPhone to enhance the social networking and general searching that we've already been doing on our other phones. We already use our phone to help find new restaurants, but this is the first time a device helped us find not only a spot nearby, but someplace that might actually be good.
You didn't think you'd escape this round-up without Super Monkey Ball, did you? Sega's labyrinth game with monkeys in hamster balls wowed us at the iPhone 2.0 introduction, and we're happy to say that Sega has delivered on their promise. The iPhone is a great gaming platform. Control is very sensitive and precise, and the game has both a steep learning curve and an addictive quality that keeps us coming back. This is the combination that hardcore gamers crave. Super Monkey Ball is no mere diversion, either. The game has loads of unique levels and should provide hours of delightfully frustrating entertainment even before you start repeating your favorites. It's a difficult game, but only because the iPhone is capable of running such a technically demanding app. If the controls were less sensitive to the tiny tilts and twists required, the game wouldn't be nearly as fun.
We're not simply biased towards Facebook since its our social network of choice. The Facebook app on the iPhone is surprisingly powerful, with some features that had us gawking. We'd used the Web-based Facebook app for iPhone before, but this new Facebook app is an entirely different animal. The app makes it easy to keep track of friends and upload photos and status messages. It also takes things a couple steps further.
The Facebook app could practically replace your personal contact list, if all your friends are in on Facebook. With each friend, you get their listed phone number and e-mail address, all in a neat package that links directly to the iPhone's Phone and Mail apps. Of course, you can send messages through Facebook as well, if you like. You can even chat with Facebook friends who are online. In the absence of a good Google Talk client, Facebook quickly became our IM client of choice on the iPhone.
Google Reader and Moviefone
If you're thinking that Google doesn't have a Reader app on the App Store, and neither does AOL have a Moviefone app, you'd be half right, In fact, for a while now both of these sites have come in versions specially designed for the iPhone screen. These are the classic Web apps available in Safari, but they function more like the newer App Store apps. In fact, we've bookmarked each of these and they have their own unique icon on our Home screen, so they look just like regular apps. Best of all, they work better than many of the downloadable apps we've tried.
Google has improved its RSS reader tool, Google Reader, in time for the new Apple iPhone 3G launch. The newest version of Google Reader manages long feeds much better than it used to. Articles are now expanded in line with the rest of the feed, instead of opening up new windows. In every way, it's a slick, efficient way to keep tags on your Google Reader subscriptions. Plus, when you've marked a story as read on your Apple iPhone, it won't show up again if you open Google Reader on your desktop.
AOL Moviefone has a nice, compact iPhone site on the Web that gives easy access to local showtimes, synopses and even quicktime trailers that can be viewed on the iPhone. You can buy tickets, call the theater or even send a message to friends, inviting them to a particular show. We wish that it used the location services on the iPhone to determine our position, but the interface and information available is so much better than the location-based movie apps we've used, we're happy to stick with Moviefone until something better comes along.
Didn't quite make the cut
We downloaded a few location-based social networking services, Loopt and Where (which uses Buddy Beacon), and had a great time trying out these apps until we realized that nobody we knew was using them . . . yet. We've seen some new advertising from Loopt, and a good strong push might be all it takes to make LBS social networking the newest extension of sites like Facebook and MySpace.
The Apple Remote also seems like a very nifty application, but it's one we'll never use, even though we have an Apple TV and iTunes connected to a home stereo system. For our Apple TV, we already have a universal remote that works just fine, a Logitech Harmony. Sure, having the remote on the iPhone lets us browser content, but we could already do this using our universal remote, sitting in front of the television. The remote app seems to add little more than an extra remote. It has potential. If it were quicker, we'd like it better. If it could act as a second screen, or provide some interesting level of control for movies and DVDs, we'd be hooked. But now, it just seems like a gimmick.
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