You may have heard it before, but the phone industry is no longer about the hardware.  Blackberrries are useful but invoke thoughts like beige and cubicle (a lethal combination to be sure). Google’s Android platform has potential, but with no users its about as exciting as dancing in an empty nightclub.  Nokias have enough gadgets and gizmos to give Q a coronary, but will you ever use your phone to watch live TV while listening to music and video-chatting all at the same time?  The iPhone is at the moment the best phone by far because it has a large community of developers who actually make fun, interesting, and useful applications.  Here’s 8 of our favorite in no particular order:

Cube Runner: Like cocaine but free. Can you ask for more? Using the iPhone’s accelerometer, you tilt the phone left and right to guide an arrow through a field of cubes coming increasingly fast and close together. It may sound elementary, but once you start, you won’t be able to stop.

Pandora: If you’re not familiar with Pandora, you should check out Pandora.com right now.  You create an account, type in a song, artist, or album that you like and Pandora will create a playlist of similar songs.  It’s a great way to listen to songs you love and find great, new songs you haven’t heard before.  Now imagine all this on an iPhone.  Super Tight.

Shazam: Have you ever been listening to the radio when a song comes on and you just have to know what it is?  Shazam will tell you. Hold your iPhone’s microphone to the music source, and with a 30 second sample, Shazam will analyze the song and tell you the title and the artist. For those of you into the whole “legal downloading” thing (not that there’s anything wrong with that), you can even download the song directly from the iTunes store onto your phone.

Google Earth: If you’ve ever had that peeping-Tom impulse, but never had the motivation to really get out there and find someone’s window to creepily look through, you must check out Google Earth.  The ability to pan, zoom and rotate every square inch of ground on this planet from the palm of your hand is somehow very compelling.  And combined with the built in street-view feature of Google Maps, seeing the world and sitting on the couch need not be mutually exclusive.

Ocarina: This is truly one of the most ingenious uses of the iPhone’s built in capabilities that we have seen so far. Using the touchscreen to display an ocarina’s four holes and using the microphone to blow into, it gives a fairly convincing rendition of Link’s favorite instrument.  Using the iPhone’s location services and internet connection, you can even listen to what others are playing and see where they’re playing it from, in real time.

Crayon Physics Deluxe: If you’ve played Crayon Physics on the PC, you know it’s what we around here call super tight.  Drawing objects on the screen that obey the laws of physics (falling, sliding and swinging just like Newton says they should) you try to move a ball through a variety of obstacles to touch the star in each of 50 or so levels.  For the most part, this translates very well to the iPhone’s touchscreen and figuring out each level can be terribly addictive in that obsessive compulsive, frustrating way.

fring: This is the last messaging app you will ever need on your iPhone and best of all, its free.  Fring can connect to your Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo!, AIM… (probably more services than you have friends) messaging accounts, allowing you to chat with all of your friends, and even call any phone using VOIP.

Fieldrunners: If you have $5 and an iPhone you must buy Fieldrunners. Simple as that. It’s a very well-polished take on the classic tower-defense game and it will waste your time. Disclaimer: if you buy Fieldrunners, the $5 you pay will probably be the last you ever earn, and you can forget about being productive ever again.

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