Unsung iPhone apps

As one of my friends finally upgraded to an iPhone recently, I’ve decided to list my favorite apps you may not know about.

Some iPhone apps are famous for their little tricks, like Shazam, and official apps for services like Facebook and Twitter are indispensable. For games, everyone should download Angry Birds, of course.

But here are four I really like that you might not yet have given a try:

Bing. Yes, Bing, Microsoft’s search engine; it’s a little worse than Google on the desktop, but I love its mobile app. It’s got plenty of features, like voice recognition and social network integration (huh?), but also does cool tricks like barcode scanning and the bird’s-eye-view Bing maps. Once upon a time (New Year’s Eve 2009) this helped me find a street that Google Maps had spelled incorrectly, and thereby deliver two female friends some personal effects they’d forgotten, though in retrospect this only contributed to a long-drawn out and disappointing series of events that ultimately…you know what, Bing is solid. Its location awareness actually makes it my favorite app for checking movie times, too.

Meebo. Meebo is my favorite instant messaging app, working with multiple accounts simultaneously. It works great with iOS 4. I don’t generally stay signed in on it, but it’s nice in a pinch.

Dictionary.com. Maybe this just marks me as a huge word nerd but one of my favorite programs on the Mac is Apple’s built-in Dictionary. This app downloads a dictionary for offline viewing, and does pronunciations over a network connection. I like it cause it’s quick compared to navigating through websites.

YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com). Google’s mobile YouTube website is so much better than Apple’s YouTube app it’s embarrassing. It allows you to select and stream “HQ” versions of videos, even over a cellular connection. They load quickly and look great over 3G, so much so that it makes you wonder why Apple’s app downscales videos so intensely. Plus, with iOS 4, this site has a cool hidden feature of sorts. If you start playing a video in Safari, you can hit the home button to go back to your homescreen. Of course, the video playback stops. But, if you bring up the multitasking menu with a home button double-tap, you can swipe to the music controls and hit play next to the Safari icon to continue streaming YouTube audio. This is nice if, like me, you use YouTube to stream music and don’t actually care to watch the video. Plus you can turn the screen off and save battery.

(Side note: if you’re Mormon, the Gospel Library, Mormon Channel (stream general conference), and LDS Tools apps totally rock, too, though I keep Lee Falin’s Scriptures app around because it still outperforms the deeper Gospel Library. Nice to see the church update its website and make some great mobile apps; now they just need to crack the nut that is MLS.)

As for other apps, I recently downloaded Calvetica and think it’s cool. Its week view seems ideal for a Retina Display, but I’m still getting used to it. What other apps do you like?