The Best Free iPod Touch Apps

Nearly six years since Apple's first iPod touch hit the market, its core mission remains intact: iPhone without the phone. It's perfect if you don't want the high monthly costs of a cellular voice and data plan, but still want a top-notch pocket-size music and movie machine—that has the ability to run over 800,000 third-party apps.

There are now two versions of the iPod touch available. The older 4th-generation model has been on sale for a while; it's getting on in age, with a slower processor and much weaker camera, but it's still a great deal ($199 for 16GB) as a do-it-all music player and game machine. The newer 5th-generation model is a bit more expensive ($299 for 32GB), but it's a stunner, with a beautifully slim aluminum design, a gorgeous 4-inch Retina screen, and a 5-megapixel camera. It also comes with Apple's new EarPods, which sound a lot better than Apple's older bundled earbuds.

Whichever one you get, the iPod touch runs almost all of the apps in the App Store, plays music, videos, games, records high-definition video, and handles Web browsing, email, and other Internet-based tasks with aplomb when connected to a Wi-Fi network.

So what are the best apps to get right away? Here's a roundup of 15 great, free programs that we consider must-haves. In this roundup, we'll pay particular attention to things an iPod touch owner might be interested in, such as Wi-Fi calling apps, additional music and video options, and apps with plenty of offline functionality for those moments when you're nowhere near a wireless hotspot.

A few caveats: The iPod touch is a killer mobile gaming machine, but games costs money. Most of the best titles aren't exactly free, although many of them are available in no-cost "lite" versions that either offer just a few levels of game play, or are supported by advertisements. We didn't include games here, but there are tens of thousands of them in Apple's App Store. Finally, to keep this list as useful as possible, we also left out some completely obvious apps that you probably already have, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Apple's iBooks. Check out the slideshow for 15 of our favorite free apps for the iPod touch.