In my own, perhaps biased opinion, I’m a pretty normal person with some pretty normal demands. I like to keep in contact with my friends and family; I love listening to music and I hate getting lost.
However, I often find that the world has conspired against me to make it more difficult than necessary to accomplish these simple tasks. My friends are spread across five different chat networks, my varied (and sometimes strange) music collection is too large to fit on any portable device, and traveling across London is confusing – even without the added challenge of train delays and planned engineering works.
Which is why I no longer brave the outdoors without having loaded my trusty iPhone with these five apps that have made my life as smooth as the device’s touchscreen:
Fring
Fring brings together Skype, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, Twitter, AIM and Yahoo friends into one universal list of contacts, allowing you to keep in touch with pals from almost every major chat network.
Even better, it also allows for free voice calls via the instant messenger client, or calls to landlines through SkypeOut, meaning that keeping in contact with friends abroad has never been easier or cheaper – especially as it gives you the ability to watch your friends via video chat.
Spotify
Is your iPhone eight, 16 or 32GB? With Spotify, it really doesn’t matter. Although only available to Spotify Premium members, the application allows you to stream music and playlists over-the-air via your mobile connection. This means that Spotify’s gigantic music library is at your disposal wherever you are. And with the ability to save offline playlists to your handset, even if your phone signal is stops, the music doesn’t have to.
Tube Deluxe
As soon the application launches it hits any veteran Londoner with their most vital piece of information: a status update of all the tube lines. The app then offers an underground map, a route-planner, various station departure boards, last trains and the nearest tube stop from your current position.
Quickpedia
A mere five years ago, anyone found carrying an encyclopaedia around was considered weird. Not anymore, especially with the wealth of Wikipedia apps for the iPhone. My personal favourite is Quickpedia, which has a super simple interface and, its biggest selling point, the ability to find entries based upon how close they are to your current location. Perfect for when you’re bored and want to know more about your surroundings.
Evernote
Ever walked past a restaurant with an interesting special offer poster in the window? Just take a picture of it with Evernote. Not only will it store the photo, and the location of where the photo was taken, but it’ll also translate any words on the poster into text, making it super simple to forward the information onto a friend for a future meet-up.
