More than a year after launch, there are 74,031 apps in the iPhone App store. Most of them are crap. Some of them aren't. Here are the 50 iPhone apps you actually need, all in one place.Well, OK, if you count the overlapping apps—paid and free Twitter clients, neck-and-neck navigation apps, the jailbreakers—it's more like 56, but that's not the point, people: The point is, since the last time we corralled all the best of the best (barring our weekly roundups, of course), the iPhone and App Store have changed immeasurably. In the last nine months we saw the release of the 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0, Apple loosening its grip on what kinds of apps people are allowed to create, and hundreds of fresh developers making genuinely new, genuinely impressive stuff. It was time for an update, and a big one.
So, hit the "iPhone Apps" link on the left sidebar, just above Bestmodo, or just click here. We've got the best games, messaging apps, eBook readers, dictionaries, productivity software and timewasters. We've got apps to keep you up on current events, to keep your daily music intake interesting, to keep you entertained on the train, and to keep you on the right interstate. These are the essential iPhone apps—a list that'll transform that shiny, boring brick you just bought into the device that everyone's always raving about. (Note: It's split into two pages, so make sure to click through)
What counts as an essential iPhone app changes all the time, and so should our guide: If we've missed anything huge, or you've got a much better suggestion for a particular type of app, let us know, or say so in the comments. We'll be updating this thing pretty frequently, and a million Gizmodo readers can do a better job at sorting through the app mess than a single Gizmodo editor. Enjoy! [Gizmodo's Essential iPhone Apps]
