The three most essential iPhone apps (out of 100,000)

I couldn’t live without Mobile Safari or MobileMail.app, third-party apps we iPhone owners lived without for a year already. However, here are three apps I think are important to the platform:

Closing in on 100,000 applications in the iPhone App Store, it’s not only hard to pick three that represent the promise of the platform — it’s impossible. So, of course, I’m going to do it anyway.

1. Tweetie 2. iPhone and Twitter go together like peanut-butter and chocolate. Tweetie 2 not only proves that, but it also proves what makes the iPhone so powerful — killer user experience. (We could write similarly about FaceBook 3.x, but let’s not make this a Social Network sweep, shall we?)

2. Real Racings. This app proves why Apple has put the focus on iPhone gaming. Gorgeous 3D graphics combined with super-tight gameplay makes this one stand out even among the increasing crowd of amazing iPhone games that now includes Command and Conquer and Rock Band.

3. Layar Reality Browser. Augmented reality may or may not be the future, but the process to determine that is quickly being worked out right now on the iPhone with apps like Layer. Turn on the live streaming video on the 3GS, search, and the data will pop up right in front of you.