Your iPhone is the ultimate entertainment gadget. That is especially true since the app store carries the hippest and most exciting entertainment apps. However, only a handful of those are the ones that could be called the best. We’ve dug deep into the iTunes ocean to come up with top twelve entertainment apps for iPhone.
Netflix
Free
All the joys of Netflix in your pocket, all the time—including the power to battle that always growing Watch Instantly queue. Streaming’s silky smooth over Wi-Fi, less so over 3G, but the app itself is indispensable.
Remote
Free
Apple’s official app for controlling iTunes from wherever your butt might find itself planted is pretty much perfect. Browse your entire library by artist, song, playlist, whatever, pick a tune, and there it is, playing in your iTunes.
Shazam
Price: $6
You know that song you keep hearing everywhere but can’t quite place? Shazam can place it. Like, almost every time. Shazam Encore gets you unlimited tags and a host of other features like charts, recommendations, lyrics, etc.
SoundHound
Price: $5
Like Shazam, SoundHound dabbles in tune recognition (smaller library of songs, snappier tagging), but it also serves as a full replacement for your iPhone’s comparatively barren iPod app. Think lyrics, artist info, YouTube links, etc.
Flixter
Free
While it blows my mind that I can watch movies on my phone, one thing I need it to do, and need it to do well, is find movie times for theaters nearby. Flixter does that and much more, packing box office charts, Rotten Tomatoes reviews, DVD releases and what seems like a thousand other movie-related features in one extremely handy app. Free.
StreamToMe
Price: $3
A lightweight client on your computer catalogues the videos of your choosing, as well as all your iTunes playlists, and then lets you easily stream the files in them easily to the app on your iPhone. The best part: all the transcoding is done on the fly, and pretty much any video format plays back superbly.
Pandora
Free
Pandora. You know the one. The internet radio app that has uplifted a million work hours and scored a million make-outs. It’s simply the best out there, streaming music at home or on the go over Wi-Fi or 3G.
Kindle
Free
Just because you don’t own a Kindle doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be buying Kindle ebooks—especially when Amazon’s iOS app is this good. While it looked for a while like iBooks might come along and disrupt Amazon’s ebooks hegemony, well, that didn’t happen.
CameraBag
Price: $2
Every iPhone photographer needs a catchall filter app for adding some artistic flair to their shots. Hipstamatic can make them look, uh, hip, but CameraBag can make them look like everything else.
Hipstamatic
Price: $2
Why do everyone’s iPhone photos look so damn hip while yours look so, you know, not. Probably cause they’re using Hipstamtic, the preeminent “make my photos look cool” app which lets you mix and match films and lenses (available for in app purchase) to make your iPhone photos look more analog than ever.
Brushes
Price: $6
Even for the artistically disinclined, having a 3.5″ palette and canvas in your pocket can be fun. Brushes is the only one you’ll ever need, easy enough for the uninitiated to jump into and advanced enough to keep real artists happy. Hell, they paint New Yorker covers with this thing.
NPR News
Free
You’ve gotta have a news app on your iPhone, because, you know, news is important. NPR’s happens to be great—you can read NPR’s reliably-interesting stories, download them for offline reading, and, and, listen to NPR radio stations while you’re doing it.