Hasta La Gadget!

With the holidays and our year-end app lists (games and everything else), it’s been a little while since we last dove in to our weekly roundups. Time to catch up!

Mint: The app I’m most excited about over the last few weeks is Mint—a free iPhone companion to the popular online financial planning site. Mint gives you recent transactions, balances and budgetary breakdowns for any of your banking, investment or credit accounts, presented with really nice typography and design. It’s read-only—you can’t make any transactions—and if you lose your phone, a kill switch on Mint.com will disable remote access to your account. I use this app every day now. Free

iHand Massage: It’s a hand massager. Suuuuuure, and that sexytime font was chosen for its superb double ‘s’ ligatures, mmhmm? iHand gives you full control over your iPhone’s vibrator to relax away all the tensions of the day in whichever way you choose. $1

iBonsai: A diversion, but a pretty one: iBonsai uses a random-number algorithm to grow infinitely diverse bonsai trees before your eyes, which you can then rotate around in 3D and save as your wallpaper. $3 is a little steep, but it’s very pretty.

Bailout: The texts of US laws are in the public domain: If the developers of Bailout are making a grand ironic statement by demanding you pay $2 for the full text of the Bailout bill, hats off. I doubt they’re that smart, though.

Zephyr: Another hit from the guys at Smule, creators of Ocarina and, of course, Sonic Lighter. Zephyr lets you draw images with snowflakes, adds wintery whoosing sounds. Right. But the social aspect is very cool: you can then send your message out to other users of the app, who will see it drawn out on their own screens in real time and can then send a reply. I haven’t received Zephyr stick figure porn yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. $1

Shapewriter 2.0 Pro: Shapewriter is an innovative text-input tool from the creator of the T9 auto-recognition system that’s now ubiquitous on phones everywhere: drag your finger over a soft keyboard connecting letters into words like a connect-the-dots puzzle, and Shapewriter will sort it out with surprising ease. The free version also has recently received a full v 2.0 overhaul, but the pro version for $10 will remove the supported ads and add landscape typing, internal copy and paste, and few more features not found in the free version.

RjDj Shake: And finally, RjDj Shake builds on the awesome concept of music generation that responds to your environment in real time by adding accelerometer input. Seven different scenes twist the sound you hear in different ways according to your shakes and shimmies. $3

This week’s app news on Giz:

• The Best iPhone Apps of 2008

• The Only 10 Games Your iPhone Needs

• Softbank’s Speeek iPhone App Translates Spoken Japanese to English On the Fly

•IAmAMan Period-Tracking iPhone App for Sleazy, Shameless “Players”

• Crayon Physics iPhone Game Looks Amazing

• Don’t Be That Guy With The New Year’s Noisemaker iPhone App Tonight

• Safari+ Adds Desktop Functions Like Text Searching to Mobile Safari

• Melody Bell Turns iPhone Jiggling Into Ensemble Performance Art

• iSteam iPhone Steam Simulation App is Amazingly Cool

• A Disney Artist Draws Way Better Than Us…On His iPhone

• Mr. Game & Watch Saunters His Way Over to the iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

There are loads of games in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch, but if you want to save money and space, which are the true essentials? Here are our 10 must-haves.

While there are enough good games in the App Store to fill up multiple pages on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you don’t need that many, nor do you need to spend that much money. If you focus on filling certain genres with single games and not doubling up on multiples, you can make yourself the ultimate “games page” of apps. Here’s the list.

Touchgrind: This skateboarding game was designed from the ground up for the multi-touch iPhone platform, and it shows. The completely unique control method of using your fingers as legs on a skateboard immediately makes sense and is totally addicting. As you get better, the new skateboards that are unlocked with high scores continually feel just within your grasp. $4.99

Galcon: Galcon is a space-based strategy game that delivers super-short games, which is perfect for the iPhone. Rather than getting dragged into games you won’t finish, Galcon lets you play a bunch of one or two minute games. You can refine your strategy with each game, and every time you lose it’s just too easy to try again. Lite: Free; Pro: $4.99

Fieldrunners: Many call this the best game in the App Store, and it’s tough to argue with them. A tower defense game with a super-high degree of polish, this is the definition of addicting. Basically, you want to set up weapons to stop soldiers for storming your towers. You earn more cash for more weapons for every guy you stop, and you lose health for every guy who gets through. And then you can’t. Stop. Playing it. $4.99

Line Rider iRide: You’ve probably played Line Rider on the internet in some form or another: you draw a bunch of lines, then a little man on a sled gets tossed down your makeshift track. The controls are simple and work great on a touchscreen, and you can play in short bursts, saving your maps for later. It’s intuitive enough that there’s virtually no learning curve, but you can spend countless hours working on your masterpiece of sledding physics. $2.99

Uno: You know Uno, you love Uno. But here’s a version that involves no pesky shuffling. If you’re more of a poker fan you probably went for Texas Hold ‘Em, which is cool, but if you ask me, Uno is a much more fun card game. After all, what fun is poker when you’re gambling with pretend money? $5.99

Rolando: This is a wonderful, cartoonish platformer that uses simple controls that are easy to learn but are used in increasingly complicated and challenging ways as the game progresses. You control a series of little balls—Rolandos—by tilting your iPhone and swiping up to jump. But you can control many of them at once, and there are also obstacles and switches you can manipulate. It’s got a high degree of polish and will suck you in from the first level. $9.99

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D: This is our favorite racing game, despite not being fully sold on the accelerometer controls of iPhone racing games. But because of that, you really only need one, and this should be it. Great graphics, good stability and plenty of variety add up to make this the essential iPhone racing game. $5.99

SimCity: This port of SimCity 3000 is stunning. This is no gimped version of SimCity, dumbed down for a touchscreen. It’s the full game, complete with advisers and all the building types you can handle, with intuitive touchscreen controls. Finally, you can build the epic metropolis of your dreams whenever you sit down and have a few minutes to kill. $9.99

Touch Hockey: FS5: Air Hockey on the iPhone is just like regular air hockey, minus the high probability of getting one of your fingers smashed with the puck. Simply put your finger on the mallet and try to score some goals. It’s also fun to play with two people, with each person holding an end of the iPhone. And hey, no quarters required. Lite: Free; Pro: $1.99

Trism: This is essentially a modified version of Bejeweled, and if you know that game then you know why you’d want it on your iPhone. It’s a classic puzzle game, one that makes the transition to the touchscreen beautifully. You’re trying to get three pieces of the same color together to make them disappear, and depending on how you’re holding your iPhone, the resulting tumble of pieces will happen in a different direction. It adds a new level of strategy to the game while retaining what made the original so awesome. $2.99

[A Bonus 11th game, From Brian: I’d like to add Motion X Poker Quest to the list for its amazing use of the accelerometer and in game physics used to roll the dice, as well as beautiful graphics and sounds and addicting game play. ]