The best free and useful iPhone apps for beginners

The transition between BlackBerry and iPhone can be a revolutionary experience but it can also be a daunting one.

With so many apps to wade through it can be difficult to know which ones you’ll end up using for a few weeks and into the years and which will be downloaded and opened once and then left in a folder never to see the light of day again.

So when a colleague who has just made the switch asked me to recommend some apps to populate her phone with I steered clear of the games and more frivolous examples (I’m not one to waste much needed space on my iPhone) and suggested my list of the top useful apps that I use almost daily.

After you’ve read my suggesstions below let me know if you’ve any suggestions for apps which are better than the native iPhone apps? Which apps can’t you live without?

Links lead to the iPhone App Store

Echofon for Twitter, the best substitute for the Twitter app which will already be on your phone (which is fine to use if you want to loose tweets if they won’t send, which is pretty annoying most of the time). Plus Echofon has a nice range of colours and a good layout which doesn’t waste space.

Facebook, obviously (even though it’s not as good as it could be).

WhatsApp, even though you have iMessage and email you’ll still find that people will insist on sending you photos/videos etc. through this (not very aesthetically pleasing) app so it’s more of a pre-emptive download because other people will make you do it.

Google Maps, because let’s face it: Apple Maps is a pile of ****.

BBC Weather, by far the most aesthetically pleasing and accurate weather app.

Instagram, if you want to distract yourself by posting and looking at pretty pictures when you’ve got a couple minutes to spare.

Spotify, music lovers rejoice. Pay the £10 a month it’s well worth it. Almost every song at your fingertips, except Led Zeppelin and Oasis (maybe one day)

PlainText, better looking than Apple’s terrible notes app and you can synch it through DropBox so that you can make notes/write stories/shopping lists on the go and then get them on your computer almost immediately.

IMDB, because you’re going to want to know where you’ve seen that actor you don’t know the name of in the TV programme you’re watching as soon as possible otherwise it will annoy the hell out of you.

Tube Map, because you wouldn’t want to get lost

PS Express, the best, most consistent photo editing tool I have found and it’s made by Adobe themselves (and it’s free).

TFL journey planner, whilst TFL don’t actually have an app, pretty much all you’re going to want to do on the move is check that you’re not going to miss the last train so you should just bookmark their mobile site. It will open in Safari but click the box with the arrow coming out of it at the bottom of the screen and then Add to Home Screen

TheTrainline, because sometimes TFL like to deny the existance of National Rail trains and you may want to plan a weekend away by train at some point.