1. Pimp Your Screen
Pimp Your Screen copyright Apalon
The main way that these apps let you customize your iPhone is to give you tools to create new styles of iPhone wallpaper. That might sound boring, but by adding some optical illusions--like making apps appear to rest on shelves or be surrounded by borders--you gain a lot of flexibility. Pimp Your Screen (US$0.99) is one of the best apps in this area. It offers hundreds of different onscreen elements like backgrounds, shelves, and icon skins. You can mix and match those items in thousands of combinations and save different images for your wallpaper and lock screen. Pimp Your Screen gives you a lot of tools to do just what its name promises.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
2. Call Screen Maker
Call Screen Maker copyright AppAnnex LLC
Wallpapers and lock screens aren't the only things you can change to give your iPhone some visual flair. You can also change the images that come up when people call you, known as call screens. Call Screen Maker ($0.99) offers a library of pre-made images and patterns to help you customize your iPhone's call screens. Doing this lets you change the image background and what appears beneath the calling bar and answer/decline buttons. Using the image you create means replacing the photo in a person's address book entry. I didn't love the look of a lot of the images in this app, but tastes vary.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3. iCandy Shelves & Skins
iCandy Shelves & Skins copyright Life's DNA
Many of the customization apps available for the iPhone work in roughly the same way: combine images, icon skins, and shelves into different styles, then save those images and use them as your wallpaper. iCandy Shelves & Skins ($0.99) does this, but also adds some other features that, surprisingly, make it less useful. First, it offers many more images than other apps I tested, including the ability to download more from the web. With so many images, though, actually browsing them all is next to impossible (and slow). More interestingly, it gives you the ability to add text and clip art to your wallpapers, which I hadn't seen before. That's a nice touch, but it's not enough to overcome the app's problems.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
4. Ringtone Apps
image copyright Rocha Software Ltd.
Visual tools aren't the only ways to make your iPhone yours. There are also audio options. Just like Call Screen Maker lets you change the image that appears when someone calls you, ringtone apps let you change the ringer that plays for each person in your address book. Some ringtone apps are paid, some are free, but nearly all allow you to take songs from your iPhone's music library and transform them into 30-40-second clips. Some apps let you add effects to the ringtones. When you've created them, you can then assign a different ringtone to each person who calls you. Here are our picks for great ringtone apps:
5. Display Block
Display Block copyright New Technology Development
It's pretty rare that I give an app a 0-star rating, but Display Block ($0.99) earned it thanks to misrepresenting what it is and what it does. Most crucially, the app doesn't do what the screenshots and description at the App Store indicate. It sells itself as a way to customize the iPhone's lock screen with greater levels of security and challenges more complex than the iOS passcode. It's not that at all; it's a collection of static images with no functionality or enhanced security you can use for your lock screen. To make matters worse, a number of features of the app don't even work. Stay far, far away from this one unless major changes are made.
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
