Despite my thoughts on “Web Apps on Mobile Devices: Yay or Nay?”, there are some great web apps for the iPhone or iPod Touch that you definitely might consider trying out. With the power of the internet and the ease of multitouch on the iPhone, web apps certainly have a lot to offer, especially with today’s advancing web technologies.
I’ve rounded up 25 of the best web apps for the iPhone, many of which are my personal favorites. And, of course, be sure to add yours to the list by leaving a comment at the end.
Mobile Web App Directories
If you’d like to browse more web apps than what you see here, be sure to check out the following two directories.
OpenAppMkt has an iPhone optimized interface to make it easy to find new web apps straight from your phone. Add this site to your home screen and you have yourself a web app marketplace app!
OpenAppMkt
Gmail
1. Gmail
About Gmail: Start Gmail, compose emails and read recently read messages while offline. Enter the first few letters of a contact and autocompletion makes typing faster. Enjoy Gmail goodness like conversation view, spam filtering, starring and view labels. Perform batch actions, such as archiving multiple messages, quickly in your inbox using the floaty bar.
Google Docs
2. Google Docs Mobile
About Google Docs Mobile: View your documents from anywhere on your iPhone. Check what team you’re playing against as you head to the soccer fields or reference your guest list as you meet your in-laws to be.
Documents are stored securely online and adapted for viewing on your iPhone.
Google Calendar
3. Google Calendar
About Google Calendar: With Google Calendar, add, edit, delete and respond to events right from your phone. No need to sync your phone with your computer. View multiple calendars shared with you. Basic offline support – launch calendar and view events even when you’re on the subway or plane.
YouTube
4. YouTube
You won’t find the YouTube web app in Apple’s web app directory because Apple already provides a native version of it but also because it’s actually much better than Apple’s native version. Get nearly full access to your YouTube account and get to watching your subscriptions!
Penzu Mobile
5. Penzu
About Penzu Mobile: An online diary and personal journal that is focused on private writing. With a unique and compelling user experience, it makes writing online as easy and intuitive as writing on a pad of paper.
Also, be sure to check out our look at Penzu’s mobile app.
Remember The Milk
6. Remember The Milk
RTM is a popular task and list management app available on just about every platform from the computer to variety of mobile devices. It’s free unless you want to want a Pro account at $25 per year with a few extra features.
Evernote
7. Evernote
About Evernote: Lets you take notes, create to-do lists, search through images, and share your memories. Everything is seamlessly synchronized across all the devices and platforms you use, including Evernote for Mac, Evernote Web, and Evernote for Windows.
Nirvana
8. Nirvana
Nirvana is GTD task management software for getting things done, based on the book by David Allen.
9. Facebook
About Facebook: Facebook is a social utility that connects you to the people around you. Facebook on iPhone and iPod touch allows you to do it all; get the latest news from your friends, upload and share photos and send and receive messages.
Digg
10. Digg
About Digg: Features include native iPhone-like story scrolling, small permalink pages with top comments, login and Digging, pagination, and jump to any topic. The Digg iPhone application offers a better way to discover and share Digg content, which the Digg community voted as some of the best content on the web.
WeatherBug
11. WeatherBug
About WeatherBug: Receive live weather conditions, forecast, radar, weather cameras and daily video outlook in a Web 2.0-style application designed for the iPhone.
LaunchPad
12. Launch Pad
About Launch Pad: Ever wanted to be able to access Google, Wikipedia and Youtube really fast on your iPhone? With Launch Pad you can! just open Launch Pad and you’re ready to go!
iPhone Link
Zoho
13. Zoho Office Suite
About Zoho Office Suite: Offers six online applications including Email, Calendar, Online word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database applications for iPhone users.
4 Pack Card Games
14. 4 Pack Card Games
4 Pack Card Games is exactly what you’d think it is. You get four different, popular card games; Solitaire, 5-card Draw (video poker style), one player Texas Hold’em and BlackJack.
Flick BasketBall
15. Flick BasketBall
About Flick BasketBall: BasketBall Game! Shoot by Flick! You have 10 times chances.It scores high with a continuous point.
Reader
16. Reader
About Reader: This is like no other Web App you’ve ever used. Recoded from scratch this new eBook Reader app functions completely offline. Open Reader, sync with your account and launch books instantly.
Stripr
17. Stripr
About Stripr: Your favorite comics are scattered across different websites and are only accessible while you have an internet connection. Web comic lovers rejoice! Stripr is an amazing webapp that allows you to access all of your favorite comics in one convenient place, offline.
Sudoku Superstar
18. Sudoku Superstar
About Sudoku Superstar: Are you a Sudoku junkie? Then you need Sudoku Superstar, a beautiful app that loads instantly, works offline and is there to provide endless hours of frustrating fun!
Flip Clock
19. Flip Clock
About Flip Clock: A simple landscape flip clock capable of showing time in either 12 and 24-hour time formats with a smooth flipping motion. This app runs in fullscreen mode and works even when you 19re offline.
Pie Guy
20. Pie Guy
About Pie Guy: There’s no better home for a fast-paced, goofy arcade game than your pocket. Remember the original joy of gaming – you know, before the distraction of drawn-out story lines, tutorials, endless dialog, and complicated rules? You want to just fire up a game and go, cucumber-cool 8-bit graphics blazing under your fingers. Swipe left, swipe right, eat all the berries, avoid the angry chefs chasing you around their pie kitchen. Then repeat at a higher speed.
Muscle Lab Mini
21. The Muscle Lab Mini
About The Muscle Lab Mini: We are all about building muscle and losing fat. The Muscle Lab is one of the most complete resources for tracking your fitness levels on the web, from monitoring your nutritional intake to analyzing strength increases – and a whole lot more in between. Whatever your fitness goal, the Muscle Lab has the tool for you.
Muscle Lab Mini
22. Money Jump
About Monkey Jump: Help the monkey to collect all bananas jumping from one side to the other. A jump costs energy. If you hit against an enemy you will lose energy. The game is over when all energy is lost.
Monkey Jump
23. Movie Times
About Movie Times: Nice, simple and quick app to get movie times based on your location (via GPS) or by suburb.
See the closest cinemas and which movies they are playing, or see a list of movies and which cinemas they are playing at closest to you. Hit the marker pin to see the location of the cinema.
Orbium
24. Orbium
About Orbium: Björn Nilsson has create this addictive HTML5 canvas puzzle game based on the old Amiga game Logical.
Harmonious
25. Harmonious
Harmonious is a smart sketchpad which allows anyone to easily create amazing works of art and share them with the world.
Harmonious uses clever procedural drawing techniques so that, with only a few lines, you can create something worth showing off.
Share Your Favorites!
If you know of some really great web apps for the iPhone or even other smartphone platforms, share them with us in the comments below. Thanks!