App Avalanche 5 promises more new, popular and free apps to check out and download to your iPhone at your whim. What you WON’T get is any mention of apps costing $999 — these apps are far more affordable and useful. If you don’t have the time to sift through hundreds of apps at the iTunes App Store, just take a look here for a summary. Read on for iPhone App Avalanche 5!

New

Picoli, from Thorsten Lubinski of Alazar GmbH & co. KG, is photo retouch app for you iPhone. No longer can you only do touch-ups to your photos on your Mac or PC! Thanks to an array of high-quality filters and sophisticated image processing algorithms, you can professional edit and improve your pictures. Get it here for $4.99.

Carrie’s Dots, from Chris and Charles Hanson, is an iPhone version of the old classic paper-and-pencil game, “Dots.” For two players, it’s great to engage in a spirited match while you’re waiting for your food, your plane departure, or anything else. If your game is interrupted by either the event you’re waiting for or a phone call, your game is saved and you can start where you left off. Get it here for FREE.

PegJump, by Jerry Jones, is the iPhone version of the classic wooden board and peg puzzle game. For some reason, I usually encounter this game at restaurants. Start with one empty hole, then start jumping pegs over other pegs, removing the jumped peg, with the object being to end up with only one peg — tougher than it sounds! Get it here for FREE.

What’s Hot

Bubbles, from Jesse Grosjean, is all about getting your Lawrence Welk on. Manipulate the bubbles with your fingers, pop them, and listen with pure joy as you reminisce your childhood bubble-popping days. Somehow I suspect my fellow writers have already downloaded this and are steeped in the Zen of Bubble-Popping as I write. Get it for FREE right here.

Lucky 7 Slots, by Griffin Technology, brings the excitement of Vegas video slots to your iPhone. What happens on your iPhone, STAYS on your iPhone. Place your bets and let the 7’s spin. Your score is saved for the next time you play. Get it here for $1.99.

Restaurant Nutrition, from Foundation Surgery Affiliates, is an app to help you view nutritional information for numerous restaurants, fast-food or otherwise, to assist you in your personal diet. The app will also help you locate the desired restaurant. Know what’s in your food, because after all, you ARE what you EAT! Get it here for FREE.

Top Paid Apps

Face Melter, by Nico Becherer, is an app that allows you to take advantage of your iPhone’s multi-touch screen and pinch and pull your photos to look how you like, then save the results. Import photos, use photos from your Camera Roll, or take a new photo and get started melting some faces! Get it here for $1.99.

Tip, from Carlos Perez, is a simple app for determining the tip amount you wish to leave a server at your favorite restaurant or other activity. Set the percentage, the number of people dining, then the amount of the bill and let this app do the rest. Your settings are saved for the next time you use the app. Get it here for .99 cents.

MobileChat, from Shaun Harrison, is an instant messaging app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It supports ICQ/AIM/.Mac/MobileMe, WindowsLive/MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, and Jabber. You can be online with multiple chat accounts at the same time, and if you lose connectivity, this app will keep your connections live until you can reconnect with EDGE, 3G, or WiFi. Get it here for $2.99.

Top Free Apps

Tris, from James Addyman and JamSoft, is a port of that ever-famous work-productivity-killer, Tetris. Drag pieces around to where you need them to drop, then tap to rotate them into place. Interrupted by an incoming call or text? No problem. Your game is saved. Submit your high score online to compete with your friends. Get it for FREE right here.

Cannon Challenge, by Discovery Interactive Technology, is very similar to the classic artillery video games you may have played in the pass. Adjust elevation and velocity to lob a projectile at your target. Your aim (if it’s good enough) is to destroy! Each subsequent level becomes increasingly difficult, with more targets, higher-value targets, and some targets requiring precise timing to destroy. Get it here for FREE.

Simplify Media, from Dmitry Dolinsky of Simplify Media, Inc., is an app for listening to your home computer music collection right on your iPhone, no file transferring required! Stream music from up to 30 friends as well. This app works over WiFi and EDGE/3G and is FREE to the first 100,000 iPhone users, so download today for FREE right here.

That’s it for the iPhone App Avalanche 5.  Be sure to stop by next week for another Avalanche of Apps!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone App Avalanche 5

Hmm. Megan Fox in retro Star Wars chic, hawt she is. But iPhone 3G with latest CGI, rocks it does!

Okay, while I may personally still be waiting for my Battlefront Touch, and accelerometer X-Wing dogfights, Star Wars: the Force Unleashed from THQ brings plenty of lightsaber and force-powered goodness:

the battles can grow enjoyably hectic as you block fire and toss your enemies aside. And it’s all promised to be backed by the same soundtrack we’ll hear in the Xbox/PS3 versions of the Force Unleashed (we just heard placeholder music during our hands-on). Oh, and something really cool. You can rotate the game between portrait and landscape mode. Neither gave the characters the stretched look.

Available September it will be. Check Gizmodo for the screenshots… you must.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

UPDATED with Video! iPhone Games: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed!

figure 1: John Carmack of Id Software

Gamedaily.com recently interviewed John Carmack about a good many things. One of the things that they ended up chatting about was iPhone games, or as one could say, lack thereof. It turns out that Carmack has an iPhone, and would love to write some games for it. Carmack talked to Steve Jobs about it at WWDC, and had followup meetings, and he’s pretty frustrated with the current situation. It’s a great read into one of the brilliant minds of gaming — even if DOOM is a parody of itself nowadays, he’s still one of the pre-eminent names of gaming.

“We’ve certainly been looking at it but Steve Jobs and I have not been seeing really eye to eye on a lot of important issues. We were in a fairly heated argument at the last WWDC [Worldwide Developers Conf.] and we’ve had a few follow-ups. I have an iPhone right now and it’s a platform I would enjoy developing for but Apple is not taking progressive steps in regards to [gaming]. Their strategy seems to be working just fine from a business standpoint, so I’m not going to second guess them and tell them they’re being fools or idiots for not focusing on this.

“The honest truth right now is that Apple’s not exactly hugely supportive of this. When they finally allowed games to be put on the iPod… in many ways it’s one of the worst environments to develop games for. You have to work on an emulator… just all these horrible decisions. I expressed my fears directly to Steve Jobs that some of these mistakes might be carried over to the iPhone, so they’re at least aware of all of them, but they’re not giving any spectacular signs that it’s going to be a big deal for them in the next year.”

February just can’t come soon enough. There are a lot of mobile games that I’d like to be playing, a lot of interesting options available with the iPhone and iPod touch, the sensors, the touchscreen… I just can’t wait. I think a lot of the big name companies will hop over to the iPhone pretty quickly. Even if they don’t like how they have to work, they’ll still be writing games for the iPhone.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Cool on iPhone Games?