10 Best Free iPhone Apps of 2009

Monday, December 28, 2009

2009 is the year the App Store hit the 100,000 apps milestone. Among them there are some great essential free apps that can make our lives easier and more fun. Below are ten of the top free iPhone apps of 2009 that everyone is using this year. If you are missing any of these apps on your app machine, may be it’s time to give it a try! It’s free!

10. Bump

With Bump, there’s no need to exchange business cards any longer. Just bump each other’s fist with iPhones in hand and your contact information will be swapped to both iPhones. It is great app for meeting new friends with iPhones. The new version even let you know if you have mutual friends with the person you bump via contact information and Facebook integration.

9. Dragon Dictation

Nuance’s popular Dragon Naturally Speaking comes to the iPhone for free. Users can now use Nuance’s speech-to-text technology to “speak” their SMS or email contents. Its a great app for those times that you just don’t feel like typing on your iPhone. Texting n’ driving, anyone?

8. Bing

Perhaps it’s the marketing. May be it is the background images. But the Bing app has consistently been on the App Store’s top 25 free app list since its launch. It looks like iPhone users really like Bing app’s image search along with a speech enabled search functionality. But will it help Mircrosoft beat Google in mobile search?

7. Tap Tap Revenge series

Tap Tap Revenge 2 continued the music tapping sensation this year. It is estimated that more than 20 million iPhones or iPod Touches have installed them, bringing its developer of 20 employees, $1 million a month. Now, Tap Tap Revenge 3 has gone free with a new user interface and new songs. It is definitely one of the best apps of 2009.

6. Dropbox

Dropbox is an extremely useful app to help you manage your files. You are give 2 gigabytes of free space online to upload your files. Upload your iPhone pictures and videos easily with a push of a button. You can also upload documents such as PDF to your dropbox webspace and read it on you iPhone. You can even mail a link for that PDF document to share with friends. It closes the gap of file management between desktop computers and the iPhone.

5. Photoshop.com

Adobe hit us by surprise with its own free Photoshop app. Cropping, image rotation, color controls, and simple one-touch filter effects can all be performed on this app and uploaded to photoshop.com.

4. ESPN Score Center

Live scores and stats for the games you care. With its new push notification feature, sport fans who are away from live TV broadcasting won’t have to glue their eyes to their iPhone for score update every second.

3. Textplus

Apps like Textplus makes us wonder why we are still paying AT&T up to $20 per month for unlimited text messages and $0.20 per text without a text plan. Textplus allows its users to send and receive unlimited text messages for free in the US.

The only inconvenience about this service is how your friends send SMS messages to you. Your friend send you SMS by sending to the phone number 60611 (GOGII) with the message content as your textplus username. Your friend will then be prompted to enter their text message. Hopefully your friends realize that you are out to save some money and will text you back with this method.

The alternative is Textfree Lite which sends text messages with your phone number as an username@textfree.us. But with its 15 text daily limit, it may not really replace your SMS package unless you buy its paid version.

2. Twitbird

Do you need a great twitter app that doesn’t cost a dime? Twitbird offers loads of features and a great UI that rivals even the popular Tweetie 2. And it is free. Its only drawback is that it only allows for 1 twitter account on the app and push notifications will cost you extra.

If you don’t mind the ads, you can also add Echofon as your other free twitter iPhone client. It will send you push notifications of mentions and direct messages free of charge. Echofon has some drawbacks. It doesn’t have all features such as geotags and lists that are available in Twitbird.

1. Facebook 3.0

Every iPhone user who is also on Facebook probably have Facebook 3.0 installed. It has a brand new user friendly interface and new features including fast loading, more contact capacity, and easier video upload for iPhone 3GS user. It all adds up to a better Facebook experience on the iPhone.