The iPhone 4 is one of the hot gifts for this festive season, and for good reason as Apple has managed to make the iPhone even better with the addition of a stunning 960 x 640 high resolution 'Retina display' screen with a pixel density of 326dpi (which is so high that it means your retinas are unable to distinguish individual pixels when held at the normal distance from your eyeballs), built-in gyroscope, a front facing camera as well as an uprated 5Mp main camera with LED flash, the multitasking (or should I say task-switching) capabilities of iOS 4 and a much more powerful processor to power it all.
But what's the point of having all this if you aren't using the right apps to show off the new functionality and power of the iPhone 4? Whether you are giving an iPhone 4 or one of the lucky ones on the receiving end, you'll need to know the very best apps out there which have been designed to take advantage of the Retina display, the front facing camera or uprated main camera, the multitasking or the added processing power. Which is where DaniWeb comes in with this round up of the Top Ten iPhone 4 Apps based upon their ability to exploit those new features.
Let's do this thing in reverse order starting at number ten and working our way up to the ultimate iPhone 4 showing off app:10. iTorch4 (Free)
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best, and iTorch4 certainly falls neatly into this category. Seeing as the iPhone 4 now features a powerful LED light to accompany the upgraded 5Mp camera, why not put that lighting ability to good use as a torch for when you need it? iTorch4 just provides you with a nice button to switch the torch on or off, and believe me it's powerful enough for finding your way around an unfamiliar hotel room in the middle of the night for example. The free version does come with a pretty unobtrusive advertising banner, but as you are not really interested in what's going on at the front of the iPhone but rather what is coming out of the back it really isn't a huge problem. And if it is you can pay $0.99 to get rid of them by upgrading to iTorch4 Pro.9. Scare Factor HD ($0.99)
Making full use of both the Retina display and the front facing camera is this silly but fun app designed to scare your friends, record them being scared and then share that scaredness with your other friends. Start the app, select a picture and pass it over to the victim who has to study two apparently identical images and simply spot the difference. What this does is focus their attention on the iPhone 4 screen fully and completely. So completely, in fact, that when the face of some deranged killer appears (along with suitably jarring soundtrack) you can pretty much guarantee they will be surprised to say the least. The best thing about the Scare Factor app, though, is that it employs the iPhone 4 front facing camera to record that reaction at the precise moment the image appears. Whether you then share that photo via Facebook and Twitter is up to you, but you know you want to...8. MegaWeather HD ($2.99)
Weather apps are, almost literally, two a penny in the App Store so why would you want to spend a couple of bucks on one? Well, if you fancied looking at what the weather was going to be like in glorious HD courtesy of your iPhone 4 Retina display you just might. And if you did want to show off the weather at more than 40,000 locations around the world, with additional radar maps for the US and a 48 hour or 15 day forecast then MegaWeather HD is currently the best way to do just that.7. Flight Track ($4.99)
Of course, every true fanboy knows that the best way to get jaws dropping and saliva flowing is to showcase something different and while there are plenty of flight tracking applications out there, this one comes in glorious high res with full Retina support. COvering more than 5000 airports and 1400 airlines you can be pretty sure it will have your, or your friends and families, flights covered. You can get real-time updates and zoomable maps showing the progress and expected arrival or departure times of domestic and international flights. Flight Track also syncs with your iPhone calendar under iOS 4 and allows you to share data via SMS from right there within the app. Cool!6. Rubik’s Cube ($2.99)
Also using the iPhone 4 gyroscope to good effect, along with the Retina display, is the first of our featured games apps, the classic Rubik's Cube. This is, apparently, the only officially licensed Rubik's Cube game on iTunes so you would imagine it was good, and it is. In fact, because of the gyroscope support you can solve the 3D puzzle just by flicking your wrist and moving the iPhone around.5. Pinball HD ($0.99)
Another game making the most of the iPhone 4 Retina display is the amazingly good looking Pinball HD, which also exploits that additional processing power for smooth and glorious pinball play whether you opt for full table landscape mode or the flying table portrait way of playing. You get three tables for not a lot of money, but it equates to hours of play and much envy from non iPhone 4 owners. Nice.4. TuneIn Radio ($1.99)
OK, we admit it, the TuneIn Radio app is not actually iPhone 4 specific when it comes to showcasing functionality but rather it is something which makes good use of iOS 4 instead. However, as your iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4 it deserves a place on this list as it's exactly the kind of app for which an ability to run in the background while you do something else with your iPhone is vital. TuneIn Radio turns your iPhone 4 into a proper radio, with around 40,000 stations to choose from all over the world. Powered by the RadioTime internet radio directory it gives you everything from music to news to talk, with a great browsing feature, bookmarking and the ability to pause, record and playback live radio broadcasts.3. Acrossair (Free)
Augmented Reality (AR) has been one of the biggest mobile buzzwords for 2010, and that's likely to continue into 2011 and beyond with hardware such as the iPhone 4 coming with a gyroscope built in and software such as Acrossair being developed to fully exploit it. This totally free AR browser uses true 3D navigation by exploiting the gyroscope to more accurately determine exactly where you are when compared to other AR browsers which rely on GPS and accelerometer alone. You see local data from big brands represented on the AR browser view in real time without jumping all over the place as you move around your location (the bigger the city the better the info, of course) and if you hold your iPhone 4 flat it switches to a Google Maps view that orients itself as you move. If you want to impress non-iPhone owners then you need an AR app, and if you want to impress them with iPhone 4 only functionality then Acrossair is that app.2. iMovie ($4.99)
Just a few very short years ago, if you were to suggest that you would be able to shoot high resolution 720p video on a smartphone as slim as the iPhone 4 then, frankly, people would have thought you mad. But that's the reality of the iPhone 4, and this app from Apple lets you edit those videos right there on the iPhone 4 as well. It truly is nothing short of a tech miracle that you can do all of this on your iPhone 4, and for less than five bucks as well. Edit your footage, add sound and effects, titles and then share via YouTube. Best of all it is so simple that anyone can use it with just a few minutes of practice.1. Infinity Blade ($5.99)
There can be only one, iPhone 4 fanboy show off app that is. And it really does have to be Infinity Blade for one compelling reason: jaw dropping, OH MY GOSH inspiring, drop dead beautiful graphics. This is as near to a 'proper' console gaming experience as you could hope to get on a smartphone. Heck, it's better than many handheld console games for sheer quality of graphics and miles ahead of the iPhone gaming app competition. Not too surprising when you realise it is brought to you by Epic, the same studios behind Gears of War and Unreal amongst others. Indeed, this app manages to bring the Unreal 3D graphics engine, or a version of it, onto the iPhone 4 in brilliant sword fighting detail. Easy to control, decent if shortish gameplay, but above all else those absolutely stunning graphics. Get it, fanboy, and show it off now!
