7 Novel and Inspiring iPhone App Concepts

There are lots of tutorials and resources about for implementing features on the iPhone now, but what’s lacking is a little inspiration. What can you use your development abilities to produce? Even if you have a few ideas, it’s possible that you haven’t taken every single feature into consideration in order to come up with the most wild ideas.

This post compiles 13 different key ideas used in some rather cutting edge iPhone applications. People have turned the microphone into a breath detector (for playing a soft-instrument ocarina), used the line-in to power a recording studio, used the speaker in combination with the mic to change voices, and more! Inspiration follows:

A Miniature Recording Studio

FourTrack is, literally, a four track recorder in an iPhone. It’s billed as a songwriting and practice tool for singers, guitar players, piano teachers, and other musicians who want to capture ideas and songs on their iPhone. Naturally, it’s just one track at a time, but it’s awesome!

iPhone as Wind Instrument

Most iPhone based instruments I’ve seen so far just rely on you tapping drums or piano keys on the touch screen. Clever enough, but SMule (SonicMule) have gone a step further and actually produced an ocarina instrument that works based on your blowing into the iPhone speaker! For all you Led Zep fans out there, check out SMule’s own rendition of Stairway to Heaven on multiple iPhone ocarinas. Smule says that “unlike other iPhone audio apps, the sound is not pre-compiled but is generated by the notes, gestures and nuance of the individual performer”.

Not into wind? How about percussion with “Air Shaker“?

Live Voice Modification

If the Ocarina didn’t impress, how about using the speaker in combination with the microphone to do live sound manipulation? Also from SMule. Perhaps you could develop an app that turned one type of sound into another? Musicians dig this sort of thing. How about an iPhone “effects pedal”?

Motion Detector = Spirit Level

A Level is a spirit level (or bubble level) application for the iPhone. All it does is use the iPhone’s built in motion detectors to detect how far off level it is. What other DIY and home improvement related apps could you create?

Turn-Based Multiplayer Gaming

NewToyInc is developing Chess With Friends, a turn-based multiplayer Chess experience for iPhone users. You might think that all chess games are turned based, but in this case the turns can take as long as the players need without having to leave the game open (a.k.a. “correspondence chess”)! TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid has written an interesting post about the app.

Live multiplayer gaming on the iPhone is nothing new, but an asynchronous variation is novel. Could you use asynchronous, multi person updates to good effect in an app?

iPhone as Peripheral

The iPhone could make a good remote control, right? Well, how about using your iPhone as a remote control for your computer – as a peripheral that provides trackpad and keyboard capabilities? Snatch, from Hoofien, does it. You get tracking, clicking, two-finger scrolling and tap, window dragging, and screen zoom. You can also build your own commands to control your computer. The Apple Blog has written an extensive blog post with screenshots.

Air Mouse is a little similar, but also has a motion sensing “air mouse” capability..! Could you use the iPhone’s “senses” to control desktop applications or other devices?

Bar Code Reader

Kevin Chiu has developed a 2D barcode (QR Code) reader for the iPhone – it’s available open source as a library called barcode2d. It uses the iPhone’s camera and processes the images to get the result. What could your app detect using the camera?