There are tons of great free apps in the iTunes App Store that can make your iPhone an incredibly useful device. But to get the very best apps, sometimes you have to drop a few bucks. We’ve compiled a list of the very best apps money can buy for your Apple smartphone.
iMovie ($4.99)
Apple’s iMovie brings users the ability to edit videos shot with iOS devices into cool, easy-to-share movies. The app gives you quick, intuitive touch controls over video clips, and you can easily edit your movies together into greater projects that can be saved, transferred to your computer and shared online.
Camera+ ($1.99)
You can use Camera+ to turn your iPhone into a powerful camera. The app gives you all kinds of additional capabilities for taking photos, like adding a stabilizer or timer, a front flash, and the ability to adjust the exposure as you’re preparing to take the photo. You’ll also get a more powerful zoom and settable scene modes, plus easy sharing capabilities once you take your photos. If you want to amp up the power of your iPhone camera, grab Camera+.
Tweetbot 3 ($4.99)
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better Twitter client than Tweetbot. It gives you full access to the social network with a simple, intuitive interface, and supports all the functions you’d expect from other interfaces, like the ability to share photos and links (as well as to view them). You can also access multiple Twitter accounts from within the app, as well.
Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPhone ($4.99)
The ability to quickly take photos wherever you are is one of the great things about phone cameras, but the big benefit of smartphones is the power of their software. With Adobe Photoshop Touch, you can actually photoshop your photos right on your phone. The app includes a lot of the capabilities users expect from the famous photo manipulation software, but simplified to make them easy to perform with a touch interface.
Moves ($2.99)
Keep track of all your everyday exercise with Moves, which includes some 60 activity types so everything from a hike or a bike ride to walking home from work can be tracked toward your fitness goals. The app lets you plot your activities on maps so you can see the distances you’ve traveled, and acts as a full exercise diary; anything that’s not automatically tracked can be added manually, and you’ll be able to see the calories you’re burning for each activity you do.
TuneIn Radio Pro ($3.99)
Imagine having access to everything that’s on the radio, no matter where you are. You get pretty close to that with TuneIn Radio, an app that brings you access not only local radio programming, but programming from all over the world by streaming it over the Internet. The app packs more than 100,000 radio stations, running the spectrum from talk and sports to music from just about anywhere.
Fantastical 2 ($4.99)
Using your iPhone to keep organized can seriously help busy people stay productive and on-task, and calendar app Fantastical 2 looks to be your means of staying organized. The app provides you with a full calendar that lets you quickly and easily schedule appointments by just typing in the pertinent information, and does the same with to-do list items by automatically sending you reminders. Fantastical also has an easy, intuitive interface and integrates with Facebook, Microsoft Exchange, Google Calendar and iCloud.
Mobile Mouse ($1.99)
Put simply, Mobile Mouse turns your iPhone into a controller for your computer. The app links with your devices using Bluetooth technology, allowing you to use the touchscreen as a touch pad, as well as providing controls that use your device’s accelerometer to move your mouse cursor as well. Mobile Mouse also let’s you use your phone as a keyboard or as a remote control, and supports lots of other control capabilities.
Reeder 2 ($4.99)
Reeder 2 is an RSS feed reader that lets you bring all the articles you want to read from the Internet into one place. The app lets you pipe in feeds from other RSS services like Fever, Feedly and Feed Wrangler, and also supports grabbing RSS feeds individually so you can keep everything organized and up to date from your favorite sites. Even better, Reeder 2 makes articles easy to read by putting articles into an iPhone-friendly format, and provides you with features like a night-time reading setting.
Velocity – Speed Reader ($2.99)
Many people learn to read by sounding out words, and this can link your reading to the part of your brain dedicated to speech. This limits your reading ability to how fast you can speak, even when you’re reading to yourself. Speed reading is the attempt to break that habit, and Velocity – Speed Reader helps by giving users a fast-paced, single-word version of what they’re reading in order to encourage users to read with their eyes, not their mouths. The app shoots one word across the screen at a time at high speed, and can integrate with other apps like Instapaper, Pocket and Readability.
