Did you know that Apple has actually filed patents for iPhone packaging? It’s true; not only is the phone itself a premium product, but Apple has carefully thought through the experience of unboxing and unpacking the phone to make you feel like you’ve got something special in your hands.
All of this is to say that a new iPhone is cause for celebration, and not only because the phone itself is a wonder. The iOS ecosystem is full of great apps to download, but it can be a little overwhelming at first glance, so here’s our rundown of the 10 best iOS apps for a new iPhone.
1. Snoop
There are tons of great money management apps for iOS out there, but our money’s on Snoop as the best one (sorry for the pun). The app is a great budgeting tool, helping you keep an eye on personal loans and quick loans you’ve taken out, parcel out repayments, and generally monitor your finances. It’s named for “Snoops”, which are little micro-recommendations the app will send you to help you make smaller and smarter spending decisions throughout the week.
2. WhatsApp
Despite many pretenders rising up to attempt to claim the crown, no other chat app has quite managed to achieve the success of WhatsApp. Privacy concerns aside (although these may be a dealbreaker for you, which is fully understandable), WhatsApp is a clean, simple, and stripped-back messaging app that doesn’t attempt to be anything more than it is. You can start chats with friends, open group conversations, and send all kinds of media including images, sound clips, and more. You can even send empty character messages for some extra fun!
3. Gmail
If you don’t have a Gmail account yet, then you need to open one posthaste. Google’s email client pips Microsoft’s to the post in terms of usability and intuitiveness; it offers everything you could want from an email service, including strong security, interconnectivity with other email services, and a generous amount of time to unsend a message you’ve just sent by accident. There are other email clients out there, of course, but for our money, Gmail is the best of them.
4. Flipboard
Are you tired of dry, boring news feeds just giving you stories without any colour or flavour? If so, then you need Flipboard in your life. This app curates stories from various different sources, including social media feeds, blogs, and other areas of interest, and presents them to you as a sort of digital magazine-style interface. You can flip through stories (hence “Flipboard”), tell the app what kind of stories you want to see in future, and much more.
5. Photoshop Express
It seems crazy that Photoshop is now available on iPhone, but Adobe has created a great little app for Apple’s mobile ecosystem. It’ll do everything you could possibly want a mobile version of Photoshop to do; you can edit photos, add filters, and even use advanced features like eye correction and more. Make no mistake: this isn’t some cut-back, watered-down version of Photoshop. It feels like the real deal, even though it’s much more compact than its desktop counterpart.
6. GarageBand
If you do any kind of recording on your iPhone whatsoever, then you’ll want to use GarageBand to edit the audio. The app is, to put it simply, incredible considering that you can download it for free. It comes with a range of built-in instruments and effects, and you can even record live audio onto it via your iPhone’s mic or an external mic. Even if you’re just horsing around with your buddies and you want to turn that audio into something semi-professional, GarageBand will oblige.
7. iMovie
What GarageBand is to audio, iMovie is to video. If you’re taking lots of videos while you’re out and about, then iMovie will help you turn those videos into something that looks professional and presentable. You can add filters, cut and edit footage, and add text and other overlays. The touch interface is ridiculously intuitive, too, so you won’t need any editing experience whatsoever. iMovie is a great tool for turning amateur filmmakers into professionals.
8. Pocket Casts
The default iPhone podcast app is fine, but you don’t want to settle for fine. You want better than that, and that’s why you want Pocket Casts. This is, quite simply, the best podcast app iPhone technology has to offer. Pocket Casts offers an intuitive tile-based interface for your podcasts, as well as plenty of other tools for organising and listening to your favourite speech-based content. If you can find a podcast out there online, you can almost certainly find it on Pocket Casts.
9. Tidal
For many years, Spotify claimed the crown of the best music streaming app out there, and if all you want is lots of songs and some exclusive podcasts, it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. However, if you’re an audiophile who’s looking for the best quality available, Tidal is the app for you. It offers a Hi-Fi tier (which Spotify is yet to do, mystifyingly) that boosts the audio quality of the songs you’re listening to, putting you right there in the studio alongside the musicians.
10. Google Maps
You might be tempted to rely entirely on the built-in iOS Maps app for navigation, but that would be a mistake. Google Maps is pretty much superior in every regard to Apple’s app, and you’ll realize that as soon as you start using it. You can plan journeys to a highly accurate degree, see public transport movements, and much more with Google Maps, and it’ll also give you up-to-the-minute traffic information to help you steer clear of jams and accidents.