#1. Radio & television set although we already have at home
There's a whole bunch of ways of getting good media onto your iPhone. The BBC's iPhone-optimised iPlayer site is genuinely very good – though it requires a WiFi connection, and you must be in the UK to access it. And you can record TV using, say, one of Elgato's TV tuners and then export the content to your iTunes library, ready to be synced to the iPhone. As far as apps go, try downloading Tuner Internet Radio – a centralised service for thousands of streaming radio stations from all over the world. Also Last.fm is a brilliant service that creates music stations tailored to your tastes. When Sling Media finally releases its iPhone client, which will allow live TV to be streamed from your home via one of its hardware encoder boxes – TV will truly have arrived on the iPhone.
#2. Dictionary & thesaurus although we hates it a lot back when in school
Yes; with the iPhone, you have access to an internet-full of information, and with a few taps, you could track down definitions and synonyms for any word you care to mention. There are a few problems with this, however; it can be sluggish, is rarely optimised for the iPhone's screen, it can lack authority, and is usually focused on American – not British – English. Step forward, then, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus . It's a proper native app, so once it has launched, it's snappier than a website. The interface could be more elegant, and the quality of the recordings for pronunciation could be better, but it's great to have the authority of the OED in your pocket. Pricey, but no more so than the paper copy, and this is far more convenient. Definitions' words are hyper-linked too for extra mileage.
#3. Band although cluelessly you don't know anything about band
This was one of the apps that was demoed on-stage to show the power of the iPhone Software Development Kit, and it remains a great show-off app for the iPhone. You can think about Band in two ways. It's either just a little tinkering device, which is useful for singer-songwriters on the move, by giving them a pad that they can jam with to try out some ideas or to get some inspiration for new melodies. Or it's a pretty meaty multi-track recorder that you could, in theory at least, use to create a whole track from scratch. There are a range of instruments included – a keyboard, a bass guitar, an interactive appreciative audience, the drum kit shown here, and a fun 12-bar blues creator – and you can layer instruments together and overdub them as you start to build your mini musical masterpiece. It's not perfect; the timings can be tricky to get right, and the export options are, by the nature of the iPhone, a little limited, but it's great fun and is, as we say, a great app to have to show off your iPhone.
#4. GPS logger although you never went anywhere
Trails records your position at regular intervals – and so works better with the GPS-aware iPhone 3G – and then maps the trail you took onto a political, satellite or terrain map, complete with altitude data. The latest version allows you to see your trail live on its map. Export the waypoint data too for use in other apps.
#5. Lightsaber although Starwars epic was over at last
Apologies if you thought this feature was all about useful stuff, because we're happy to recommend fluff as well, and it doesn't get much fluffier than Lightsaber Unleashed . It whums and buzzes convincingly as you move your phone around, and you can create your own custom character with photos from your collection.
#6. Spirit level and tape measure although its sound gay
RulerPhone calculates lengths by getting you to take a photo of what you want to measure with a credit card in the scene. It will then calibrate to that, using some on-screen calipers. While it's not wildly accurate, it's perfectly good enough. Meanwhile, iHandy Carpenter packs a ruler, spirit level, protractor and plumb line into a slick, pretty app.
#7. Games console although the outcome is throwing your i phone to the wall when loosing
There are now dozens of very high-quality games available for the iPhone and iPod touch platform. Super Monkey Ball, one of the first, is still one of the most polished, but with big releases such as SimCity, Brothers In Arms andSpore Origins, it looks like the big boys are here to stay. Jailbroken iPhones can run emulators, too.
#8. Remote control although your i phone already broken after you throwed to the wall
There are many ways to use your iPhone as a remote control that we can barely fit them in. Apple makes two apps. Remote controls your iTunes connection over your Wi-Fi network, and Keynote Remote lets you control presentations running in the version of Keynote that comes with iWork '09. But the developer community has produced some cracking little apps. Air Mouse is one of our favourites; it gives you a virtual keyboard and mouse on your iPhone that you can use to control your Mac – great if you use a Mac as a media server, for example – and you can control the cursor trackpad-style or by waving your iPhone around. LogMeIn Ignition (£17.99) lets you assume full control of Macs and PCs over the internet, and if you liked the sound of Keynote Remote but haven't upgraded to iWork '09, investigate StageHand.
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