A few weeks ago, I welcomed an iPhone into my life. Long story short, it’s been mostly wonderful.

I’d read about a few trail specific applications for the Jesus Phone, and since many of them were free, I grabbed them to try them out — but I honestly don’t know what they’re good for. Anyone who hikes who wants GPS is going to have an actual GPS unit, which is far more accurate, more battery-efficient, and infinitely more droppable than the iPhone is ever going to be.

I’ll keep looking around, and if anyone’s got a suggestion or an app they really dig, leave it in the comments for me — but this week, Google unleashed a brand spankin’ new iPhone version of Google Earth.

The same usefulness arguments apply here — but this is notable in that it is essentially the complete desktop version of Google Earth — only it runs on your phone. And y’all know how much I love Google Earth.

And if that weren’t enough for you, the touch interface is an INCREDIBLE way to interact with this program. Dragging your fingers across the screen is an intuitive and effective way to navigate the world, and tilting the phone — while still a bit wonky right now — still works well to view areas in 3-D. I’m sure Google will have some good updates to smooth out the wrinkles in the next few weeks.

Check out this video of the program in action, then go fire up your App Store and give it a try yourself. It’s free!

Tags: App Store, Google Earth, GPS, iphone