The Five Best (Free) iPhone Productivity Apps
Our favorite iPhone apps let you aggregate various online accounts, back up notes and photos, create to-do lists, look up local businesses, and surf the Web offline--all without spending a dime.
Four of the five tools on this list had their share of limitations and bugs to work out, which made me shy away from testing paid productivity apps. That said, of the twelve free productivity utilities I looked at, the five here were the clear-cut leaders.
If you've got a better alternative to any of these productivity tools, please give us your recommendations in the Comments section below. And if you're more of a slacker, see our list of 17 free iPhone apps that let you do fun stuff--such as interact with music in cool ways and pick a good place to eat.
All of the following apps were tested on a first-generation iPhone with the 2.0.1 firmware. It should be noted that during testing, several EDGE network issues came up with both my iPhone and those of coworkers with the 3G iPhone; they reported slower-than-usual 3G connectivity and had to rely mostly on EDGE speeds, as well.
1. PageOnce Personal Assistant
Website | App Store link (requires iTunes)
In the realm of free applications, no "killer productivity app" for the iPhone exists, but PageOnce Personal Assistant is as close as it gets. Rather than providing its own set of services, PageOnce Personal Assistant aggregates your online accounts and feeds them to your iPhone in one handy, streamlined interface. However, those feeds are limited to read-only status. It's still a handy app for seeing your bank balance (no payments or transfers, though); looking at what's coming up on your Netflix queue; reading your MySpace, Digg, and Twitter feeds; seeing how many minutes you've used up on your monthly cellular account; viewing your cable bill; and scanning your Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and other Web-based e-mail inboxes (no sending messages, though).
I did see a few notable omissions to PageOnce's otherwise impressive lineup of online partners. For example, PageOnce has no Facebook integration, which is especially surprising given the numerous references on the PageOnce site to getting your Facebook feed through the app.
In addition to the read-only limitations, I noticed a bit of a lag time between signing up for feeds online and having them work on my iPhone. Also, I really hope PageOnce has airtight security (the PageOnce site claims it does), due to the amount of personal information submitted to get the full range of offerings. Also, as our Ed Albro points out, it's much easier to just check your e-mail inbox than to use the limited read-only feed on PageOnce.
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