I’ve read through the Apple HI guidelines for iPhone multiple times, gathered a few resources for bickbot’s newsletter and stumbled across a few really great apps with bad ass interfaces. I think one of the main reasons the iPhone’s been so successful, is some of the beautiful UI’s the designers/developers have created. So I decided to share a few of my favorites.

Here’s a list of my top 5–

1. EDGE (developer site)

Edge was by far the best time I’ve had early on with an iPhone game. You could tell Mobigame’s put a lot of thought into control and UX. At the time, it offered a tilt control option and gesture based control– I immediately fell in love with the gesture based controls, they just seemed to make sense while playing. This is in addition to their lovely “8-bit” menu system and sounds.

2. Convertbot/Weightbot (developer site)

Tapbots really, IMHO, are probably the best UI designers in the iPhone app business at the moment– they are who I strive to beat in my designs. Tapbots know that the user experience is just as important as actually getting stuff done with their app– Their apps BLEED UX and gorgeous UI.

3. Eliss (developer site)

Another game. The reason I choose Eliss is– it’s the first time while playing an iPhone game that I actually envisioned myself living in the future. LOL– this is the type of UI I imagined I would be using when I was younger– a simple, natural, multi-touch interface. Check it out– you will be amazed.

Could you imagine manipulating spreadsheet data this way on a larger tablet device or table top? Uh– yes.

4.Birdhouse (developer site)

Adam Lisagor & Cameron Hunt have done a beautiful job creating non-standard UI elements (that look like standard UI elements) and integrating them with their twitter client. Some of their custom stuff really looks like it should be included in the iPhone OS’ standard UI toolkit.

5. Twitteriffic (developer site)

Developed by Iconfactory– isn’t that enough information? They make some of the best Mac OS X applications– and it obviously shows they understand what makes the iPhone platform so important. Again, very clean UI elements that look like they should be part of the standard iPhone UI.