What are your favourite apps?

Favourite app on phone is 'flashlight' it's free and fires a powerful beam of light from the back of your phone.
Uses to date; finding chicken roosting up a tree in the dark when it should have been in bed, locating dropped car keys in dark car park, finding right thrown switch in fuse box when lights all went off.

Nelliem 'apps' is an abbreviation of 'applications'. They are programs you can use on a smartphone. I use the Guardian and Independent apps in the morning to find out what the day's headlines are; I also use the alarm clock and the weather apps; Google skymap to find out what's up there; a conversion site for currency, weights and measures etc; and various others.

Can somebody patiently explain to me what apps are. I know its something to do with fancy mobile phones that you can download to enable you to do other things!

On my iPhone I have a Gransnet icon which takes me straight here. Often. I'm not sure quite how I set it up, probably via Safari (which again I use often).

Otherwise the ones I use most are Google, Sky News (despite loathing the Murdochs), BBC News, Wikipedia (very, very useful), Met Office, Slimming World (not really up to the job, they say they're re-launching an improved version soon), the Maps app that came on the iPhone (again I use this all the time. It seems to be able to find any named place anywhere in the world) and BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 icons, which are very useful for telling you exactly what's on the radio ie who's talking or the name of a piece of music, even what time a programme is due to end.

Maybe I'm being a bit iffy about the difference between an app and an icon.

I have lots of others on my phone eg recipes, radio stations of the world, quizzes, tourist guides, restaurant guides, games, social network apps etc which I never touch.

The other one I use a lot on my phone is the alarm clock/timer, esp when I'm cooking! Or sleeping. Very insomniac tonight though, look at the time of this post.