Ten crazy iPhone apps

Whether for a quick laugh, cheap entertainment, or to prove that the world is an interesting place, these ten crazy iPhone apps are just peculiar enough to warrant attention. Many of them will only provide a few minutes of fun, but they are always good to have on hand at parties and to impress friends with something so odd and impractical that it makes for a good laugh.

Zippo Lighter
It’s just not cool to wave a real lighter at a rock concert, and holding up your cell phone is so passe. With the Zippo Lighter app, you can flick the iPhone to open the lighter and then light up a flame that moves back and forth as you move the iPhone. There are quite a few custom lighters, including one with a rainbow and butterfly, and you can add your own inscription.

Tom Cruise Quotes
Okay, the movie star does say some goofy things. This app collects them all for you to peruse with just a flick of your finger up and down (to read the whole quote), with a background image and a way to view all of the quotes to select the one you want to see. And that’s it – the app only has two or three dozen quotes, most of them perplexing and odd.

Creepy Dolls
Easily the strangest app for the iPhone, you can flip a scroll dial to see a distorted picture of a doll, usually with odd colorings or – in a few cases – extra markings to make it look even creepier, such as fake teeth. There’s also a matching sound effect of a baby gurgle. You can shake the phone or click the Shake button to see a random creepy doll.

Urinals
Taking more than a few cues from the stellar Flight Control app – where you guide airplanes to landing strips – Urinals offers the same gameplay, except that you guide lavatory visitors to a stall. The game actually has a hilarious narrator who makes comments while you play, and each new level (up to 36, with 12 different bathroom layouts) does offer an increasing challenge.

iSteam
While some of the crazy apps for iPhone are downright creepy, iSteam is just an odd diversion. The app presents what looks like a bathroom mirror covered in steam. You blow into the iPhone microphone to make more steam, and draw with your finger. The sound effects are realistic, and you can change the background image, adjust finger size and pressure level, and share your drawings with using Twitter or by e-mail (just double-tap to see the settings).

Annoy-A-Teen
Supposedly, teenagers can hear a piercing 15 kHz sound that adults cannot – because the adult ear loses the ability to hear certain frequencies. (This is not actually a verified medical fact, however.) Annoy-A-Teen takes advantage of the idea by letting you play a high-pitched tone on your iPhone. There may be some practical use – such as encouraging rowdy teens to move away from a private location, which is currently done in some areas of London.

iFart
A round-up of crazy iPhone apps wouldn’t be complete unless we included iFart, the all-time weirdest app on any smartphone. Yes, it makes flatulence noises, and you can send them by e-mail or record your own (please, not too realistic). To choose a sound, you turn a dial that looks like a toilet paper roll dispenser. The real fun involves a sneak attack with a customizable delay, which means the iFart app has taken the place of a whoopee-cushion the world over.

Holy Cow
Like the Tom Cruise Quotes app, Holy Cow only has one purpose: it plays the sound of a cow mooing. There are no other settings involved, just a picture of a cow. When you tap on the screen the cow moos. A few extra options, such as other farm animal sounds or a variety of cow picts, would have made the app more interesting, but might also make it less weird.

iBeer
The iBeer app has found a wide audience (likely the same group as those who bought iFart), even if it only has a few options: you click the beer name you want to drink, and the app pours you a “glass” on your iPhone. You turn the iPhone to drink the beer, and there’s an auto-refill option. The app uses fake beer names, and the sound effects don’t change much between brands. Also, once you’ve used it once or twice, it has limited appeal.

Star Wars FX
Here’s an app that at least offers some practical enjoyment, even if the selection of sounds is limited. With Star Wars FX, you can click an icon to play a sound from the classic movies series, such as Darth Vader saying “I am your father” from The Empire Strikes Back. You can mix and match sounds by clicking on them in rapid succession, creating your own soundtrack.

Written by John Brandon. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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