Essential Beauty iPhone Apps

I got an iphone 4 for my birthday this past summer. I love this thing. I had wanted a smart phone really, really badly, and this feels like one of those “how did I ever live without this?!” items. For those of you who also have iphones, I thought I’d put together a list of my essential beauty-related apps.

Yelp – Free!
The Yelp app is excellent for locating salons, spas, and shopping, complete with reviews.

TweetDeck for iPhone – Free!
If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’m a very active Twitterer. Tweeter? Whatever. I use it a lot. My favorite thing about Twitter is that you can ask your followers a question and get an answer back right away. This is useful for everything, but it’s also great for beauty-related conundrums too. Like “which of these colors looks better on me?” or “does this eye shadow make me look like Megan Fox?” etc. You know, the important stuff.

UPS & USPS – Free!
Duh, to obsessively track all of those packages that you and I both know are coming in the mail at any given moment. Yeah.

Stila Get The Look – Free!
This app is meant to be a companion to the Stila Color Wheel Palette. It features dozens of beautiful makeup looks that are sorted by what skin/hair coloring you have. There are diagrammed instructions with where to put each color, complete with some gorgeous photos. Even if you do not have the palette, this app is still fun because it can give you great inspiration if you’re stuck in an eye shadow rut. And hey, it’s free.

Sephora To Go – Free!
Okay well. This app is not something I use very often because I do not trust their product reviews. They screen them, and I have on more than one occasion found any negative review I write doesn’t get posted on the product page. They deny doing this of course, but I know they do. However, sometimes it’s a good reference to have if you just want to check the price of something, or some other question you have about a product Sephora carries. There’s also a shopping list feature that is useful as well. I think you can get a freebie if you go to a Sephora store and show them that you have the app, too. It’s a mini Tarina Tarantino primer. I don’t know if they’re still doing this, but if they are it’s worth a shot to try a free gift.

Total Beauty – Free!
This app gives you access to hundreds of beauty product reviews. They’re sorted either by brand or by product type. I do not know if their reviews are screened or not. Like any product review, whether it be mine, yours, or Kristin Stewart’s, always take it for what it is– an opinion. I find reviews helpful when making purchases, but ultimately I have to decide if I think the item will work for me.

Beauty Grub – Free!
I love this app. Get access to RSS feeds of some of the most amazing beauty blogs on the web, plus magazines like American Salon, Allure, and more. They also have links to the top 3 beauty retailers – Sephora, Ulta, and Beauty.com.

Beauty Alert! – $1.99
This is a great concept and a creative way to utilize a phone in a way that relates to beauty. Beauty Alert! tracks how old your products are and reminds you when they expire so you toss them and don’t keep using expired products. This is very important with things like sunscreen that lose their effectiveness after the expiration date. The only thing I wish I could change about this app is the life span it assigns to products. I don’t always agree with what their opinion the lifespan is (for example sunscreen – they say 6 months, I say it’s more like a year). Beauty Alert! also sells labels you can put on your makeup products to remind you of the expiration date. However, I still say it’s worth it if you are like me and often forget how old your mascaras are because you have eight of them and don’t remember when you opened what. ;)

Glamzy – Free!
Glamzy is a fun little program that allows you to create your own face charts with colors based off of MAC products. It is a useful tool for when you’re feeling creative so you don’t forget whatever inspired you later when you’re sitting at the vanity. There is also an upgraded Glamzy Pro with more features.

Some fails…

I have been looking for a great inventory program to use to keep a log of my makeup stash. I figure it’ll help me avoid buying dupes of things I already have. However, I have yet to find a program that will accommodate someone with a large stash of makeup to begin with. I’ve tried BeautyCase (free) and Makeup Inventory (.99), but I’m not too satisfied with either. BeautyCase is better than Makeup Inventory from what I can tell, but it’s still not perfect. There are also literally dozens of beauty tip/makeover apps. I don’t really use any of them. Most of them are just common sense stuff you could get just from reading blogs or talking to people on Twitter/Makeup Alley. If you’re interested, there are tons to choose from. I’d just download a bunch of the free ones and see which ones have info that you like.

How about you? Do you have beauty-related goodies on your iphone?

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