By Kenda - February, 18th 2013

I’ve had my HTC8X Windows Phone for a month now and I have to say I’ve developed a total love affair with it. Before now I was a die-hard Android girl. I couldn’t be swayed by the bells and whistles of other OS (and trust me, my iPhone friends tried). Using the HTC 8X was different at first, I admit. But it didn’t take long at all to adapt to the sleek, rapid response interface and find the apps that made this phone truly mine.

My Favorite Free Apps for the HTC Windows Phone 8X

• Facebook Pro – This app was much easier to use and more intuitive than the official Facebook app. Where the official app would often delay an update made from my phone, Facebook Pro is completed in real time which makes it much easier to keep up with conversations and notices. It also offers the live tile feature that shows images of friends and my unread message count just with a glimpse at my phone.
  
• Rowi [lite] – Rowi is an easy to use Twitter app for Windows Phone with a clean and simple interface. Unlike the traditional Twitter apps that resemble your actual Twitter account, Rowi offers a multiple screen interface similar to clients like Tweetdeck, etc. It offers multi-account signin with the option to ‘Tweet As”, letting you easily access all of your accounts at once.
• Nokia Drive+ [beta] – Hands down the best turn-by-turn voice guided navigation app I’ve used thus far. Available for free, Nokia Drive takes a new approach to GPS service by allowing you to use it OFFLINE. No more high data usage during a long drive. Besides giving excellent turn-by-turn voice directions, spoken street names and route settings to avoid toll roads, highways and more – Drive also alerts you when you are going over the local speed limit.
• SkyDrive Ringtone Maker – The easiest way to turn an mp3 into your ringtone. Pull a song from your SkyDrive music folder and install it as your ringtone in just 3 taps. Right now my ringtone is Wayward Son by Kansas. I’m a Supernatural fan. Don’t judge me.
• Wallpaper – Enjoy a whole variety of high quality wallpapers either by browsing through different categories or search for what you have in mind by keywords.  Unlike some other wallpaper apps, Wallpaper lets you download the images to your photo album without the app running in the background or losing your images if you uninstall it.
• Handyscan [free and paid] – Handyscan lets you scan documents and forms and save them to Skydrive, send via email or save as a pdf file. [pdf available in paid version]
• Ask Ziggy – I call this one ‘Siri without the attitude’. It offers some great voice activated services including: email, language translation, directions for a location, messaging, make calls, math (tips), search tweets, weather and much more. My favorite feature is saying “What’s up?” and Ziggy tells me all of my appointments, the weather, traffic and more to prepare me for my day.
• RemindMe ToDo – This is a simple, yet fully functional todo application. Unlike other reminder apps that require you to enter a new event for each reminder – RemindMe allows you to make lists such as ‘phone calls to make’ and keep it separate from another list like ‘Appointments for the Kids’. Easily edited with several reminder options.
• Bluetooth – “Bluetooth On/Off” allows you to easily access your Bluetooth settings from a tile on the front screen. One tap and you can turn your Bluetooth on or off.
• AppSwitch – If you’ve recently moved to a Windows Phone but can’t find your favorite apps then use AppSwitch to find Windows Phone replacements for Google Android or Apple iOS apps.
• SkyDrive – My favorite app of all. SkyDrive is your storage space that connects your phone to your computer and your online storage area. It’s fast – I mean FAST. And I love that I can set up my photos and videos to automatically be sent to SkyDrive so I never worry about losing them. Being able to instantly send something from my computer to my phone without any additional hookup or software is a big plus for work. I also store all of my MP3s so I can have all of my playlists without clogging up my memory.
• Monster Stack 2 – Just plain fun. Monster Stack 2 is a unique and creative physics based game. I’m addicted.
• 4th & Mayor – 4th and Mayor is a snappy, simple, fun Foursquare client for your Windows Phone. Faster, easier and with more features than the official foursquare app (including live tile)
• Hello Friends (free trial available)  – Hello Friends is a quirky lock screen app that creates a collage of your contacts and Facebook friends. You can allow the app to select different faces each time or filter the list to display your closest buddies by choice. You can also choose to display things like weather or battery life as well. $1.29 to buy.
• Sky Player – With SkyPlayer I can access my entire SkyDrive music collection from my phone without any restrictions or memory usage. Download songs, create playlists or stream directly. With single click import of your entire music collection, it’s never been easier.

Content and/or other value provided by our partner, HTC.