You’re opening up your last Christmas present from your fairy godmother. As expected, she’s giving you that coveted iPhone XS. But having the latest and greatest Apple hardware rarely ever means having the most reliable software out of the box.
Apple Maps, despite its refinements, is still crappy. The default iOS email app is still a bit lacking. Plus, there are a couple of other apps that you might need or want to install before you can call your new iPhone truly yours.
In this article, I’ll share with you a couple of apps that you may want to consider installing to get the most out of your new phone. Whether it be for lack of good default apps or just because it’s an absolutely must-install software for your new phone, these apps are guaranteed to enhance your new iPhone experience.
Outlook for iOS
Simply put, Apple’s default email app is terrible. Searching for a specific email, for example, is going to take you a good couple of minutes especially if it’s from a few years ago. Good thing there are a couple of alternatives that you can choose from. But among them, only one stands out – Microsoft’s Outlook.
It’s not a surprise that one of the best web email managers is also at the top of their game on mobile.
Formerly named Acompli and rebranded as Outlook upon being purchased by Microsoft, the app closely resembles the look and feel of iOS. But it offers a lot more than what the default email app is willing to give.
It melds the simplicity of iOS with the information-oriented approach of Windows. Across the bottom of the app, for example, are the Mail, Calendars, Files, and People buttons. These are all commonly used features in Outlook and having them built-in to the app makes handling emails extremely efficient.
Outlook manages all of these data extremely well even while also handling multiple accounts. Simply put, Microsoft’s mobile email management app is the most complete in the Apple App Store.
Google Photos
iOS devices take outstanding photos. Each one you take is just guaranteed to be great except if you have terribly shaky hands. Apple pays a lot of attention to the camera system on their phones. This makes it tempting to take photos of everything that's even slightly interesting. Because of this, that dreaded “Storage Almost Full” message appears more often than we want to in a lot in iPhones.
If you don’t want to cough up the hefty dough for the additional iCloud storage, Google is the second best. What’s more important is that you can avail of this for the low low price of free. Yes, you heard that right. Even for iOS users, Google Photos is free. Furthermore, it’s also unlimited. So you can go on and take pictures of your cat to your heart’s content.
Aside from the obvious cloud storage, Google Photo also offers something that not even iCloud can provide – advanced search features. You can search for a particular photo using Google Assistant's advanced AI capabilities. It scans your photos for content and delivers it back to you. If, for example, you search type in the word "balloon" in the search box, Google Photos will pull all the photos that have balloons in them. It no longer relies solely on the metadata on the file in order to categorize photos. This is extremely important because as you take more and more photos, it will get harder and harder to scroll through everything to find a particular picture.
The only caveat here is that it downgrades your files a bit because it caps photos to 16 megapixels. But, since you’re shooting with a smartphone and not some high-end DSLR, this should be a non-issue.
Pocket
Apple News is great. It doesn’t really need replacing but being great doesn’t mean that there’s nothing better. Pocket is definitely in contention for that distinction. Aside from having curated content, this news aggregator app also lets you download the article for consumption on a later date.
Furthermore, it's compatible across all devices. Your saved articles will be made available in real time across all of your devices where you've set the app up. So, you could save it on your computer and have access to it on your iOS or Android device automatically. As long as the content has already been downloaded, you don't even have to be connected to the internet to access it at a later date.
Google Maps
I’m taking a wild guess here… You’re probably not a fan of getting lost in a foreign city. If that is the case, you’re going to want to install Google Maps as well.
While Apple Maps have improved by leaps and bounds, there’s still lots of room for improvement. Especially because Google Maps is free and is implemented well for iOS. Other than being extremely well optimized for Siri integration, there isn’t much that Apple Maps has over Google’s version.
Google’s data advantage versus Apple is just so immense. They basically collate all of the information that the masses of Android devices collect every second. So, accuracy-wise, there’s no contest - Google Maps is hands down better than the Apple default.
Fantastical
The bare-bones Calendar app on the iOS is by no means terrible. In fact, part of its appeal is its simplicity and synchronicity to your other Apple devices. But it can be too simple for its own good sometimes.
For power-users, Fantastical serves as a much more intuitive and detailed calendar app that has excellent synchronization with other devices. It syncs your schedule not just on your Apple account app but other accounts as well. It’s essentially a one-stop calendar app for both personal and professional accounts. There’s only one you, after all, so there’s no point in not having to look at more than one schedule.
Data input is also a lot better on Fantastical than the default calendar app. It suggests predictive texts as to where the meeting or appointment is going to be depending on the context you’ve initially given.
Apple Maps, despite its refinements, is still crappy. The default iOS email app is still a bit lacking. Plus, there are a couple of other apps that you might need or want to install before you can call your new iPhone truly yours.
In this article, I’ll share with you a couple of apps that you may want to consider installing to get the most out of your new phone. Whether it be for lack of good default apps or just because it’s an absolutely must-install software for your new phone, these apps are guaranteed to enhance your new iPhone experience.
Outlook for iOS
Simply put, Apple’s default email app is terrible. Searching for a specific email, for example, is going to take you a good couple of minutes especially if it’s from a few years ago. Good thing there are a couple of alternatives that you can choose from. But among them, only one stands out – Microsoft’s Outlook.
It’s not a surprise that one of the best web email managers is also at the top of their game on mobile.
Formerly named Acompli and rebranded as Outlook upon being purchased by Microsoft, the app closely resembles the look and feel of iOS. But it offers a lot more than what the default email app is willing to give.
It melds the simplicity of iOS with the information-oriented approach of Windows. Across the bottom of the app, for example, are the Mail, Calendars, Files, and People buttons. These are all commonly used features in Outlook and having them built-in to the app makes handling emails extremely efficient.
Outlook manages all of these data extremely well even while also handling multiple accounts. Simply put, Microsoft’s mobile email management app is the most complete in the Apple App Store.
Google Photos
iOS devices take outstanding photos. Each one you take is just guaranteed to be great except if you have terribly shaky hands. Apple pays a lot of attention to the camera system on their phones. This makes it tempting to take photos of everything that's even slightly interesting. Because of this, that dreaded “Storage Almost Full” message appears more often than we want to in a lot in iPhones.
If you don’t want to cough up the hefty dough for the additional iCloud storage, Google is the second best. What’s more important is that you can avail of this for the low low price of free. Yes, you heard that right. Even for iOS users, Google Photos is free. Furthermore, it’s also unlimited. So you can go on and take pictures of your cat to your heart’s content.
Aside from the obvious cloud storage, Google Photo also offers something that not even iCloud can provide – advanced search features. You can search for a particular photo using Google Assistant's advanced AI capabilities. It scans your photos for content and delivers it back to you. If, for example, you search type in the word "balloon" in the search box, Google Photos will pull all the photos that have balloons in them. It no longer relies solely on the metadata on the file in order to categorize photos. This is extremely important because as you take more and more photos, it will get harder and harder to scroll through everything to find a particular picture.
The only caveat here is that it downgrades your files a bit because it caps photos to 16 megapixels. But, since you’re shooting with a smartphone and not some high-end DSLR, this should be a non-issue.
Apple News is great. It doesn’t really need replacing but being great doesn’t mean that there’s nothing better. Pocket is definitely in contention for that distinction. Aside from having curated content, this news aggregator app also lets you download the article for consumption on a later date.
Furthermore, it's compatible across all devices. Your saved articles will be made available in real time across all of your devices where you've set the app up. So, you could save it on your computer and have access to it on your iOS or Android device automatically. As long as the content has already been downloaded, you don't even have to be connected to the internet to access it at a later date.
Google Maps
I’m taking a wild guess here… You’re probably not a fan of getting lost in a foreign city. If that is the case, you’re going to want to install Google Maps as well.
While Apple Maps have improved by leaps and bounds, there’s still lots of room for improvement. Especially because Google Maps is free and is implemented well for iOS. Other than being extremely well optimized for Siri integration, there isn’t much that Apple Maps has over Google’s version.
Google’s data advantage versus Apple is just so immense. They basically collate all of the information that the masses of Android devices collect every second. So, accuracy-wise, there’s no contest - Google Maps is hands down better than the Apple default.
Fantastical
The bare-bones Calendar app on the iOS is by no means terrible. In fact, part of its appeal is its simplicity and synchronicity to your other Apple devices. But it can be too simple for its own good sometimes.
For power-users, Fantastical serves as a much more intuitive and detailed calendar app that has excellent synchronization with other devices. It syncs your schedule not just on your Apple account app but other accounts as well. It’s essentially a one-stop calendar app for both personal and professional accounts. There’s only one you, after all, so there’s no point in not having to look at more than one schedule.
Data input is also a lot better on Fantastical than the default calendar app. It suggests predictive texts as to where the meeting or appointment is going to be depending on the context you’ve initially given.