The ten essential applications for your Windows Phone

Let's put ourselves in a situation. You have just received your brilliant Windows Phone, you open the box, insert the SIM, turn it on and after fiddling with the interface for a while you ask yourself: And what applications should I install? Although from the Marketplace you can explore some, you will always miss a jewel. That is why we are going to see the 10 essential applications for your Windows Phone.

Twitter and Facebook, always connected to your social networks

Windows Phone is really well integrated with Twitter and Facebook, and if you only use it sporadically or not very intensively, you won't need more.However, if you want to do something more advanced (send private messages on Facebook or follow lists on Twitter) you need separate applications.

For Facebook we only have the official application, which has all the features we need: push notifications, update our status, add friends, review photos, send messages... It doesn't have chat, but with the Messages hub there's no need.

Twitter also has an official client in the Marketplace, with push notifications and support for all features of the web client. It's not bad at all and I'm sure it will help many of you, especially considering that it's free. If you want something more advanced, soon we will bring you a comparison of the best Twitter clients, which offer more advanced features for those who are most active on the social network.

Download | Twitter | Facebook

Whatsapp, a bad but necessary application

I'm sure that practically all of you here use WhatsApp. Since there is no public API, we only have the official, free application, which is not exactly a technical marvel. Do not expect that using Whatsapp will be a bed of roses.

The app is slow, the interface crashes when you're loading messages, and push notifications appear when they want. However, it's the only thing we Windows Phone users have, and the only thing left to do is wait for it to improve .

Download | WhatsApp

Fhotoroom, the best application for your camera

Let's go now with the most interesting applications. Fhotoroom is the perfect complement to the Windows Phone camera, with the same options when it comes to taking photos and with an interesting detail: the possibility of changing the focus and exposure adjustment points to perfectly fine-tune the photograph.

Once the photo is taken, we have several options to edit it, from the most basic changes such as color adjustment, exposure or rotation, to Instagram-style filters, including tilt-shift or the famous vintage. After having made the editions that we want, Fhotoroom allows us to upload the photo to its social network, or save them on the phone and on SkyDrive. It is totally free, and I assure you that it is worth installing it.

Fhotoroom

Skype, always stay connected

Skype could not be missing from this list. The application, which is completely free, allows us to chat with our contacts and call them. If you also have a phone with a front camera, you can make video calls.

The interface is very well adapted to the Metro style, and the application has never given me a crash.The only problems that I see is that it does not integrate with the rest of the system and that we do not receive calls with the application closed, although this is more a Windows Phone problem than Skype.

Download | Skype

gMaps, Google maps on your Windows Phone

I must admit: I'm not a fan of Bing Maps. In my Lumia I can use Nokia's maps, which aren't bad, but I prefer Google Maps with gMaps , a very complete application that fulfills its mission very well and with which we won't miss any of the maps features.

gMaps has all the layers of Google Maps: map, satellite, hybrid mode, and the additional layers of public transport, traffic and weather. We can use Street View or search for sites near our position with just two clicks. It also allows us to see the route between two points, whether on foot, by car or by bike (public transport will be included in the next version).

Of course, gMaps locates us on the map and tells us the speed and orientation. It also has a driver mode that keeps the map centered where we are. They have a free version supported by ads, although I think it's worth paying the two euros that the Pro version costs.

Download | gMaps | gMaps Pro

Fuse, always on top of the news

One of my favorite applications on Windows Phone is Fuse , a really cool RSS reader. As you can see in the screenshots, it does not show us the news in lists. We have three interface options: Ribbon style, with the news in panels; Ipsum style, in which only the titles of the sources are; and finally the Square style, with mosaic news in the purest Metro style (or Modern UI, as you prefer).

We can classify sources into groups, which we can then anchor to the home screen to have them just one click away. These groups are created by us, although we can also import them from Google Reader. The reading interface is very comfortable, with the list of articles from the source at the bottom. It costs €1.29 and has a fully functional trial version: the only thing is that it will erase your settings periodically.

Download | Fuse

Pocket Recorder, the lost sound recorder

Perhaps one of the most striking shortcomings in Windows Phone is that there is no sound recorder. That's why I wanted to include Pocket Recorder, a really complete application to capture audio from your phone.

Pocket Recorder allows us to do many things when we have recorded the audio: trim it, save it to SkyDrive, create a ringtone, create a task with it or even save it with our GPS location for easy access .The paid version costs one euro, although they have a free version that works practically the same as the complete one, without trial period or ads.

Download | Pocket Recorder

MetroTube, Metro-style YouTube

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I think MetroTube is one of the best designed apps on Windows Phone. It has all the features you would expect from a YouTube player: you can search and watch videos, comment and like>"

If you're also logged in with your YouTube account, you'll be able to see your subscriptions, favorites, playlists, videos you've uploaded, and videos you've marked to read later. In addition, from the main interface you can review the most viewed and recommended videos. As I say, all with a very attractive and really fluid interface. MetroTube is free, so I don't know why you haven't installed it yet.

Download | MetroTube

Clearer, a gesture-only task manager

You may have heard of Clear, a gesture-only task manager for iPhone. On Windows Phone someone has created an application that follows exactly the same principles, and I assure you that they have done a great job.

Clearer is an incredibly simple task manager. As we install and run it, it will take us through a tutorial that teaches us how to use it: scroll down a list to create a new item, swipe a task to the right to complete it, tap to set a time limit... Once you get used to it, Clearer it's great.

The application also takes advantage of Windows Phone features such as live tiles: by pinning a task list to the start we will have at a glance all the tasks that we have left to do. Clearer costs one euro and has a trial version with ads.

Download | Clearer