What is the best iPhone app?

There are now hundreds of thousands of apps available for your iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, iPod touch and iPad, and, surprisingly, many of the best are free. The iPhoneisn't so much a smartphone as it is an app phone. That's all the Home screen really is — a gateway to apps. Tap an icon, launch an app. But which apps should you launch? Out of the almost one million apps on the iPhone App Store which are the ones every new iPhone owner really needs to have? Which are the ones that will best help you with your work, your hobbies, your responsibilities, and your fun? Out of all the apps,
which deserve your attention? Which are the very best?

1.  Inbox by Gmail: Get control of your Gmail account with Inbox by Gmail. The app organizes your mailbox based on the types of messages you receive, making it easy to quickly locate emails when you need them. You can view information like delivery order updates, pictures, flight statuses, and reservations details without even opening a message. The Snooze feature lets you tell Inbox to remind you about a particular email later on.

2.  Uber or Lyft: At some point you're going to need a cab and there just won't be any in sight. Save yourself some time now and go ahead and download Uber or its competitor Lyft. Both apps are operating in most major cities (and some not-so-major ones and will come pick you up whenever and wherever you need them, often for less cash than a traditional taxi). Watch out for surge pricing, though. If rides are in high demand then prices often double, and can reach more than ten times their
regular rate.

3.  Spotify: Everything is better with music. With the purchase of a premium plan, Spotify allows you to listen to your favorite jams on demand, just as if you were carrying around your entire music library with you everywhere. The app has a radio option for when you want to discover new tunes, and allows you to sync music to your phone to listen when you're offline. Download a few playlists over Wi-Fi before you head out on a trip, flip offline mode on, and don't worry about getting a big charge on your cell phone bill.

4.  Evernote: Evernote is essentially a virtual notebook you have with you everywhere—perfect for downloading whatever is bouncing around in your brain. You can make notes directly in the app, save images and articles from the web, upload pages from physical notebooks, and track tasks. Evernote can even handle audio files. The best part? Everything you add to Evernote is searchable, so you can find it next week (or even five years from now) quickly and easily.

5.  Magisto: Who has time to edit their own videos? Magisto makes your smartphone videos look like they were edited by a pro with just a few seconds of work. The app takes your photos and videos and uses artificial intelligence to edit them together into videos you can share with friends and family. The video editor has a number of built-in effects as well as a music library. Finished creations can be shared instantly from within the app to places like Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp, or emailed to friends privately.

6.  PhotoSynth: We did a bit of a double-take on seeing Microsoft's name attached to this, not least given the lack of a price-tag. But PhotoSynth is a really great panorama app; it's user-friendly and fun to use, especially when watching your panoramas take shape while you capture them. (The iOS Camera app also has a panorama mode, but PhotoSynth's more flexible and works with older devices.)

7.  TonePad: Virtual pianos and guitars are all very well, but purely digital musical toys are more suited to Apple handhelds. TonePad is the best of them, using a grid-based interface that enables you to turn notes on and off and compose pleasing and harmonious loops; your creations can be edited, saved and uploaded to share with other users. 

July Systems has earned a name for itself in the mobile app development industry. We offer a full suite of mobility solutions – from consumer apps to next-generation enterprise mobile applications. If you want to explore the projects we have done, please check out our Portfolio.