With so many apps in the iTunes App Store, it can be tough to sort through them all to find the gems. Here are our editors’ handpicked choices for the 50 best free apps for available for children on the iPhone and iPod touch, along with some honorable mentions.
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Archive for category Best Free iPhone and iPod Touch Apps
When we reviewed the top 3 barcode scanners including Shopsavvy back in December, we were somewhat disappointed in the test results. Each performed well in a certain area, but none provided the complete picture, namely both quick scanning and solid price search results. We’re happy to say that due to a recent update, ShopSavvy‘s (free, iTunes link) scanner has improved dramatically to the point it’s a clear winner, and we have added it to our list of Best of iPhone Apps.
ShopSavvy is one of those apps that just makes your life a little easier, especially if you’re a big shopper or bargain hunter. Say you’re at the store shopping for a new speaker dock for your iPhone. You find one you really like, and you want to buy it today, but you’re not sure if the store has a good price. With the ShopSavvy app, you simple scan the products barcode using the iPhone’s camera and get a list of prices from online retailers for comparison purposes.
One of the things we liked about Shopsavvy over the better-selling RedLaser app is that, in addition to prices from dozens of online stores, it provides prices from Amazon.com. Anyone who shops online knows that Amazon is a great weather gauge for prices. RedLaser does not include Amazon.
The ShopSavvy iPhone app has other neat features that make it a must download. Some results have accompanying product reviews so you can check on quality. The app offers a Wish List where you can save items for future shopping. Another feature is Price Alerts, where you can set a low price and be alerted when a product dips below that threshold.
To scan an item, you launch the app and tap ‘scan,’ which opens the iPhone’s camera. Position the guides over the barcode and hold still while the app scans. I was surprised just how quickly and successfully ShopSavvy can scan barcodes. It takes literally seconds in most cases.
The app functions best when pricing items commonly available online like media (books, video games, cds, etc). We tested the app in an auto-parts store, a major electronics retailer and a bookstore, and ShopSavvy offered results for just about everything we threw at it. Once it identifies the barcode, the product page pops up with reviews and online prices. If you’re having a hard time scanning the barcode, you can also manually enter the UPC number.
The app is not perfect. We were somewhat disappointed in results for grocery items. I scanned a bunch of food boxes at home, and it either didn’t recognize the barcode or didn’t have a corresponding product page. The developer claims that “at the end of the day, price comparison on bottled water isn’t important,” but I disagree. Another problem was that some of the prices in the search results were “false positives,” showing expired deals or weird eBay prices that weren’t accurate. The app also has a problem scanning barcodes on curved surfaces.
ShopSavvy will also show local prices for products if they are available, in addition to prices from online retailers. These feature is probably great for people in large cities, but it had few local prices for my small town, which is understandable. According to the developer, ShopSavvy works best on the iPhone 3GS, which has an auto-focusing camera. However, I tested the app on a 3G with good results, especially in stores. At home, just use good lighting (the brighter the better) and don’t expect much success with food items. My advice: try it out in a store first to appreciate how well it works.
Conclusion
ShopSavvy is an impressive app that works incredibly well. I found it especially useful for books. If you come across an interesting book at the bookstore, you can scan it and read reviews, and you’ll have a record of it if you decide to buy the book later. While I would appreciate more grocery coverage, I’m not going to knock them for that—the true value of this app is in high-value comparison shopping. Needless to say, I wish I had this app when I was Christmas shopping, and it earns a spot on our Best of iPhone Apps list. Highly recommended.
ShopSavvy is a free download from the iTunes App Store.
Blockbuster has always lagged behind Netflix in just about everything, and iPhone apps have been no different. And now, finally, an official Blockbuster app (free, iTunes link) is available in the App Store. It allows Blockbuster Online users (like me) to manage their queue on your iPhone.
With the app, you can add and remove movies, change the order of the queue, search, and browse top 10 lists and categories. There is also a store finder that uses GPS to find the nearest Blockbuster. The one feature I’d like to see added is the no wait/short wait/long wait status that appears next to each movie in your queue on the website.
Overall, it’s a solid and well-designed app—kudos to Blockbuster for getting it right the first time, they just sure took their sweet time to do it. Better late than never (just don’t say that Blockbuster’s shareholders).
Blockbuster is a free download from the iTunes App Store.
At first glance, FStream (free, iTunes link) is just another run-of-the-mill streaming radio app for the iPhone, and not a very good looking one at that. But it has one killer feature: live recording of audio streams within the app. And you can download those recordings off the iPhone onto your computer using WiFi.
To record live audio, you play a radio stream, tap the Record tab, then tap Start a new record. When you’re finished recording, you can give your new recording a name, like “All Along the Watchtower” or “Baby Got Back”—not that you’re actually recording those songs, right?
The recording formats used are AIFF or WAV—both high quality. Of course, high quality has the problematic side effect of requiring a lot of memory. For example, a 3-minute song recorded in AIFF runs about 30MB. With that kind of memory usage, you’ll quickly run out of space on your iPhone.
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You may have noticed Pandora Radio‘s (free, iTunes link) frequent appearance on the iTunes top downloads list, and there’s a reason for it. Simply put, it’s an excellent app that has earned a spot on our Best of iPhone Apps list. If you’re constantly on the hunt for new music, this is the app for you.
You’ll need a free account to use the Pandora Radio app, although your settings and stations will transfer over if you already have a web-based account. If you are new to Pandora, you can set up an account directly in the app or visit Pandora.com. The app has a variety of preset stations for just about any genre. Seriously, you can find everything from drum & bass to deathcore metal to flamenco — and everything in between.
If you hear a song you like, you can bookmark it for later. Under the booksmarks tab, you can buy the song from iTunes, create a new personalized radio station with similar songs or email the song to a friend. The customized radio stations are much like Genius in the iTunes store — pick one song and the Pandora Radio app will add it to a playlist along with similar songs. As the songs play, a thumbs up or thumbs down helps improve the selection. The iTunes tagging functionality works well, and it had no problem directing me to the correct listing in the iTunes store.
Unless you’re playing with the app, the iPhone will auto-lock after a minute. It becomes kind of a pain to awaken the iPhone every time you want to skip a song or change the station, so you can turn off auto-lock in the app’s settings menu so the screen will remain lit. This will drain your battery much faster, but if you are near a power source it is much more convenient.
There are a few inconveniences, but nothing that detracts from the overall value of this app. There is a delay of a few seconds when skipping between songs, and the app takes a little while to become responsive when the iPhone is unlocked. The Pandora Radio app includes ads, which you can turn off temporarily by tapping the ‘x’ in the corner. The biggest bummer is that your music stops if you have to leave the app to do something else on your iPhone, but your song will pick up where it left off when you return.
Overall, I’m sold on the Pandora Radio app, and we highly recommend it. The app has very few hiccups and the song selection is impressive. You’re bound to find some great songs thanks to its recommendations, and it’s just the right app for when your iPod playlist is feeling a little stale.
Pandora Radio is a free download from the iTunes App Store.
If you’re one of the millions of people who use Twitter each day, you need a Twitter app for your iPhone. Fortunately for us Twitter addicts, there are about a billion apps for the iPhone that help you tweet, track trends, and manage your followers on the go. After testing numerous free Twitter apps, we’ve identified five free iPhone apps that should be at the top of your list.
1. TweetDeck
Rise&Shine (iTunes link) is an excellent free clock app for the iPhone. It’s the only free clock I’ve seen that shows you the weather too. There’s no need to enter in a zip code–the app uses the iPhone’s GPS to pull down local weather.
The app has three visual themes: reflection, flip clock, and digital. It has both a portrait and landscape orientation view.
The current temperature is displayed in the bottom left corner along with a graphic symbolizing current conditions and the day’s forecasted hi/lo temps. Tapping the weather brings up an extended forecast. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have an alarm clock feature.
Rise&Shine is a free download in the iTunes App Store.
Yahoo! Fantasy Football ’09 (free, iTunes link) lets you manage your Yahoo! Fantasy Football teams wherever you are. With the app, you can you edit your lineup by adding and dropping players and sorting through free agents (a search bar makes finding players easy). Live Scoring lets you follow the score of your weekly matchup in real time. Yes, Yahoo! has finally added it for free after charging for it all these years, probably due to competition from ESPN Fantasy Football, which has offered free live scoring for years now.
Overall, the app has a very slick interface and features some smooth menu transitions. It’s quality of design is a little surprising to me because most of Yahoo’s other official apps are not so great.
Yahoo! Fantasy Football ’09 is a free download in the iTunes App Store.
Sportacular (free, iTunes link) has long been our top pick for sports scores on the iPhone and is now even better thanks to the addition of push notifications. The developers have done an impressive job with how much control over the notifications they’ve given users. SportsTap, another sports app with notifications, has an all-or-nothing approach to notifications that is too spammy, and I had to turn if off.
There are two ways to set up notifications. When viewing the daily scoreboard, you can tap the little cog icon and set notifications for just that game. There are settings for push alerts for 3 hours before the game starts, game start, game ends, score changes, and more depending on the sport (ie, score at end of inning for baseball, score at end of quarter for football).
A second way to set notifications is by tapping the Alerts tab at the bottom of the screen. You can set game alerts for your favorite teams or for individual games. The only downside is that, for individual games, you can’t set alerts for games further in the future than today (or for football, this week’s games). Hopefully they’ll had that in the future. Check out more screenshots below:
Sportacular is a free download from the iTunes App Store.
I’ve been looking for a good iPhone clock app. My old first-gen iPhone pretty much sits in a dock on my desk all day because I’ve decided to use it as a Skype phone. Why not use it as a desk clock too?
A good iPhone clock app disables the iPhone’s auto lock, so as long as you have it plugged in, it will always display the time without going to sleep. After searching through the hundreds of clock apps in the store (most costing $0.99 or more) and testing out dozens, I found these four excellent free apps.
Naver Clock
NaverClock (free, iTunes link) is a cool flip clock for the iPhone. The app has an flipping animation for the turning of every minute and hour. It also conveniently displays a monthly calendar. There is an option to set an alarm for those who want to use their iPhone as an alarm clock. The only problem with that app is that settings are all in Japanese Korean.
Free Digital Clock
Free Digital Clock (free, iTunes link) is very basic clock app that shows time (including seconds), date, and day of the week. There is no alarm, but there are settings that allow you to change the color of the clock to just about any color.
Theme Clock
Theme Clock (free, iTunes link) features 9 different styles of digital clock to choose from. There are settings for a 24-hour clock, show weekday, show date, dimmer, show iPhone status bar, and auto-lock.
Note: The clock launches stuck in landscape. To get it in portrait mode, I had to rotate the iPhone a few times.
White Clocks
White Clocks (free, iTunes link) is an analog style clock featuring 16 clock faces to choose from. There are settings to show the date, disable auto lock, and to randomly choose a clock face upon launching. A downside is that none of the clock faces feature numbers.
*Update 9/19/2009* Also check out Rise&Shine, another free iPhone clock with weather.
For more great apps, check out our Best of iPhone Apps page.