You might survive without them, but just barely.
By Guest Of A Guest — Written on Apr 01, 2015
By Gloria Kim
With millions of apps swimming around in the iTunes store, it's easy to overlook some of the most innovative and potentially life-altering ones. If you've always stuck to the simple life of essential iPhone apps (Messages, Mail, Music, and Maps), we urge you to explore what's out there this spring.
From submitting instant rental applications to a mile-high club version of Tinder (we're serious), click through for the best apps to download now. You might survive NYC without them, but just barely.
1. POCKET. You friend sends you a "HILARIOUS" link, but hello, you're at work. Without the hassle of bookmarking and organizing your webpages for later, Pocket lets you save the webpage for later with a click of their "pocket" icon.
The app, once downloaded, gets incorporated into the web browser you are using. To access your "pocketed" pages, you simply need to download the app and make an online account to see that everything has been organized in an easy-to-read format. You can access your saved pages either from your laptop, phone, or other devices, as long as you have you account information.
Best of all? It's free!
2. WINGMAN. If you're looking to join the mile-high club, consider downloading Wingman — where Tinder meets air travel. Users create a profile with their picture, personal details, and flight number and may mention whether they are traveling for "business" or "pleasure." The application will show you other Wingman users on the flight, or around the airport area. If you're into each other, you can start a conversation via Bluetooth or in-flight WiFi.
Maybe that layover won't be so boring after all.
3. FLAVOUR. NYC has over 20,000 restaurants and sometimes, we just can't choose where to go for dinner after work. With Flavour, you search restaurants/bars by neighborhood, type of event (date night, dinner with family), and see the menu provided through their sleek-white format.
Moreover, the app shows you reviews from reliable sources like The New York Times (avoid the angry biased Yelpers). Flavour shows you which restaurants are upcoming and hip on NYC's bustling scene.
4. BETWEEN. Anyone who is in a serious relationship, long-distance or otherwise, must download this app. The creators of Between aim to recreate what technology has been missing, that is intimacy through a digital platform. (A "private beach" one would say.) There are only two people when you access the application, you and your partner.
You share your private messages, write personal memos, send cute-flirty emojis, share images, and create a technological memory box of your relationship throughout its course. when your significant other isn't with you, you can open the app to look through the photos and everything else without any clutters from other people bombarding your screen.
It's only about you, your partner, and the relationship.
5. EXPENSIFY. Expensify's simple motto is "to make expense reports not suck." The app does receipts-scanning, tracking time or mileages, business travel, and the app also creates expense reports that are efficiently comprehensible. You can create personalized categories (such as "groceries", "work", "shopping", etc) to avoid the migraines of shifting through hundreds of unorganized bills. It also imports any bank/credit card statements, and other bills, for the affordable price of $0 to download onto your devices.
This might be the app that finally turns you into an adult.
6. ZUMPER. Zumper has just launched its app and if you're currently in the market for a new apartment, download this NOW. Zumper is the channel that connects you to brokers and property managers when you fill out their rental applications from your phone with a feature called "Insant Apply." What makes this app better than applying in real life? Zumper gives you the advantage of INSTANT application submission.
Based in San Francisco, Zumper is now powering over 10% of the rental applications there, so you can imagine how big this is set to get in New York.
7. ENLIGHT. This list wouldn't be complete without at least one photo editing phone application for all the Instagram aficionados out there. Enlight is the photo editing app every iPhone photographer needs. With the classic Photoshop-like tools and attractive never-before-seen filters/effects, Enlight offers a space for you to creatively edit your snaps.
The app is best used in a landscape view to allow more room for editing. For $3.99, Enlight is one of the few photo editing apps that offers a satisfying full-feature set of editing tools, so it's worth the small price.
This article was originally published at Guest of a Guest. Reprinted with permission from the author.