What is a Utilities iPhone App?

Utilities apps are useful everyday tools to help you do all kinds of things from planning a garden to tuning a guitar to making sure your wall of photos hang straight. There are apps to help manage the memory on your device, convert measurements from metric to imperial and back again, add cute little emoticons to your email and text messages and even track packages through major carriers (FedEx, UPS and so on.)

What to Look for:
After using several of these useful programs we found these factors to be important in a utilities iPhone app. A utility app improves the way the iPhone or iPod touch and/or the individual elements function. It may seem to be an obvious statement but the best apps will utilize the iPhone’s capabilities in interesting and ingenious ways.

Features:
iPhone utilities apps fall into many of the other app categories and so should have a range of features. A good utility app will provide a well-rounded selection of features that take advantage of the device’s features such as the GPS, camera, accelerometer or touch screen. Another obvious statement that must be made is that if the app is a converter or calculation utility, the formula used should be consistently accurate.

Interface:
The UI (user interface) for an iPhone app should be cohesive, organized and well thought out. If finding an element requires that you search for it, you’ll probably end up just deleting the program. The best utilities apps will employ multiple components in a polished interface.

Graphics:
While graphics aren’t generally the focus of utilities apps, every program should have clearly identifiable buttons and use font sizes that are easy to read. Any images that are used should take advantage of the gorgeous display.

Stability:
App stability is critical for any iPhone app. It affects how often you will actually use the program. If it crashes, freezes or loads slowly, you simply won’t use the app out of frustration.

Program Size:
Most utilities apps require modest amounts of memory so program size isn’t quite as big a deal as other apps such as games or photography. And since a number of the utilities apps are actually system stats monitors, you’ll be able to keep an eye on the memory usage of all your apps.

Support:
Most iPhone apps don’t require a lot of support, however an email address for specific questions and requests is very helpful. Generally, developers are very responsive to comments and suggestions and some have incorporated an open-forum type of support that allows them to more easily interact with their users.

If these types of programs are useful to you, you should also check out some of the other iPhone App reviews. Also be sure to read our review of the iPhone 3G in our touch screen cell phone category.