Browsing apps in the App Store isn't quite criminal, but it's definitely not optimal for finding fantastic apps. Besides Giz's own iPhone app coverage and roundups, there are four other ways to find buried goodness.


TheAppleBlog lays out four different sites that make it way easier to find the quality app gems that are wallowing, helplessly, in the toxic cesspool of utter crap that makes up most of the App Store.


First up (and most highly recommend of the bunch) is AppBeacon, which requires an account, and you track what apps you own, like and dislike, filtering out the crap you're not interested in (or that's just crap) and bookmarking what you might wanna check out. Unfortunately, there's no recommendation system built-in yet based on what you do like, but that's the next logical step.

AppShopper is from MacRumors' Arn Kim, and it shows you the newest and mostly recently updated apps, which you can filter by pricepoint and even price changes, so you can see when an app you want gets cheaper.


Apptism is similar to AppBeacon, but has deeper, more customizable filters to get really specific about what you're looking for. The killer feature is its Preview listings, which encourages devs to post screenshots and other info about upcoming apps they're working on.


iPhonexe is apparently pretty crappy and ugly, but the value is that it lists apps for jailbroken phones too.


Update: A bunch of readers recommend the 99-cent app AppSniper to track app prices and when they get cheaper, from your iPhone, no less.

How do you guys find new and cool iPhone apps? [theAppleBlog]