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Hey, there are over a billion apps out there, you know? There are only a few featured each week by the App Store, only a tiny fraction make the top paid and free charts, and fewer still are included in Apple's Essentials collections.

What that means is that there are a ton of great apps and games out there that just don't get discovered. Let's remedy that, at least a little bit, with our choices for ten of the most underrated apps on the App Store.

Bird Zapper - Here's one of the more ridiculous match-three offerings out there, with a solidly pleasant presentations, control set, and game mechanics. If you're up for some wacky bird torture and like the zen-like state of mindful repetition, this one's for you.

Epic Win - You know what's boring? To-Do lists. Even worse? Completing them. Chores suck, but Epic Win turns them into a game, offering you experience points and level ups to keep you interested and motivated. I still rock this app on my iPhone.

Hard Lines - Take two time-honored video game genres, the dual stick arcade shooter and Snake, and mash them up. You'll get something like Hard Lines, one of the stickier games out there, one in which the resulting app is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Blocks Cometh - This retro-flavored platformer/jumper should have made a longer lasting splash, what with its look, sound, and solid controls. Regardless, it's a game that you should grab for your iOS device right now; it's that good.

Match Panic - Originally titled Critter Panic, this match three game has it all: pixelly artwork, retro chiptune soundtrack, and the addictive nature of time-based pattern matching. Get ready to bliss out with your iPhone and a set of headphones when you play this fantastic game.

Mint - Honestly, I don't know how I lived or did taxes before Mint, the mobile app version of the award-winning financial web service. I find it surprising, though, how few people know of the service or the app. I'm here to right that wrong, now, by recommending you give it a try.

CardMunch - This LinkedIn-sponsored business card scanning app is probably the best of the ones I've used, but I doubt you've even heard of it. Eclipsed by apps like Evernote Hello, CardMunch seems to do a better job recognizing funky card designs. It also connects right to LinkedIn, which makes a lot of sense for those of us that rely on that for business contacts.

Camera+ - Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time replacing Apple's built-in apps with third-party ones. Part of it is the inability to set other apps as default, and part of it is that Apple's apps work well, and simply. Camera+ is one of the exceptions, as it does so much more to take iPhone photography to the next level. Seriously, get this app.

Knights of Pen & Paper - If you're a closet Dungeons & Dragons fan, you'll already warm to the alliterative title of this smart, tongue-in-cheek homage to fantasy role playing of the analog sort. My kids and I pass the iPad back and forth with this game all the time, even to this day.

Rdio - Poor Rdio, it never gets much love. When I see streaming music mentioned in any type of press, it's always Pandora and Spotify that are mentioned. Rdio is a brilliant internet radio platform, organized more by album for us older music lovers. It's got a great catalog of both popular and more indie music, and just gets better each day. Give it a try for free and see if it works for your brain.

The App Store turns five this week, and we'll be taking a long look back at this disruptive force in the way we use our mobile devices. Back in 2008, when the App Store launched, we had no idea how far it would come in such a short time, but hindsight is a good thing.

During that time, there have been a ton of apps that changed and improved the state of the art. Here, then, are ten that we think really matter, apps that had an effect on our lives, even now. Apps that changed the landscape of what we expected from a mobile device, and gave us new ways of interacting, sharing, and understanding our world.

Instagram

The grandaddy of social image sharing, Instagram created, with an ease of use and pretty image filters, a whole new social network based on images. In an era of Facebook (who eventually bought the service) and Twitter, that was no small feat.

Snapchat

While derided as a possible porn-chat app, Snapchat took a single idea and refined it to a razor's edge: take a picture, caption it, and share with your friends. Then, zen-like, that picture disappears. The hidden potential in this app caught on with young and old alike, changing the way we communicated with pictures. Without an archive, Snapchat lets users freely share what they might not otherwise.

Whatsapp

Here's an app that allows anyone on any platform to exchange messages with anyone else on any other platform. In a world where you're just as likely to have friends using Android or Blackberry as iOS, this was a revelation. Many other apps tried something similar, but Whatsapp has the userbase and an easy to use, intuitive app that brought it to the forefront. Now we can stay in touch with all our friends and family, regardless of platform, for free.

Camera+

The photographer's photography app, Camera+ fairly invented iPhoneography, letting iPhone users capture and edit better photos than the built in app with ease. Since its launch, the app has kept pace with upgrades in technology and the camera lenses in each iteration of iPhone, empowering real photographers and talented amateurs alike. Heck, they even pioneered using the volume button as a shutter release, until Apple shut that down, only to use it in the built-in Camera app.

Dropbox

Before Google Drive, before iCloud, there was Dropbox, a service that mirrors your documents across computers with a simple, unified login. The Dropbox app on the iPhone took the same, intuitive simplicity and allowed us all to access and edit the same documents on the go as easily as doing so on our Macs and PCs.

Evernote

Take notes, save pictures, record audio, bookmark websites. Do this on any device you own: Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android. Evernote has become the de facto standard for network-connected note taking, and much more. You can use this app to write a shopping list on your computer, and then pull it up on your iPhone while at the store. You can collaborate with others on documents, sharing notes and notebooks with ease.

Shazam

Ever been in the car when a song comes up on the radio and you just can't remember the artist that performed it? Hold your iPhone up, launch Shazam, and let the app magically recognize the music, returning the artist name, album, and easy-purchase buttons for the iTunes store. Newer features include movie preview recognition with links to more information, and television ads that, when recognized, provide links to vendor websites. It's magical technology at its best.

InstaPaper

Marco Arment created Instapaper as a basic web app, single handedly creating the "read it later" market that many other apps now compete for. Arment started the service in 2008, built the iPhone app himself, and saw the service grow far beyond his initial vision. He's subsequently sold the app to another company, who promise to maintain and improve it as we continue forward.

Waze

Waze was one of the first social mapping and traffic app, allowing users to share road conditions with each other while on the go. It may be one of the most unappreciated apps on this list, but it continues to serve a loyal and vocal user base, providing real-time help from users to help us all plan the best route possible.

Foursquare

The check-in craze started here, with Foursquare. Becoming the mayor of a location, along with various gamification features, provided a stickiness not seen before the apps release. Even with privacy concerns dogging its every step, Foursquare has managed to remain in the public imagination as the way to let our friends know where we are at any given time.

Flipboard

RSS is great, as are Twitter and Facebook feeds. But what we really want is a place to see all of those things at once, published in a slick, easy to use layout. Enter Flipboard, still the best darn social news reader around. It makes the various web sites and social feeds we all rely on much prettier and interesting to look at, letting us keep up to date without having to dip into several different apps to do so.

Pandora

Founded as a streaming internet radio service on the web, Pandora made the transition to iOS brilliantly, becoming a force to reckon with in the competitive streaming music market, as well as a household name known by one and all. While other services continue to chip away at the venerable service, offering on-demand music access, Pandora continues to be the music access app of choice on iOS devices everywhere.

Urbanspoon

Can't decide where to eat? Shake your iPhone and Urbanspoon will randomly choose a restaurant nearby that matches your criteria of price, cuisine, and distance. Released in August of 2008, Urbanspoon was the first app on the App Store to combine GPS location data with a database of local dining and drinking establishments, creating a loyal community that reviewed meals, restaurants, and service for other users.

Your App Authority

Every week, the 148Apps reviewers comb through the vast numbers of new apps out there, find the good ones, and write about them in depth. The ones we love become Editor’s Choice, standing out above the many good apps and games with something just a little bit more to offer. Want to see what we've been up to this week? Take a look below for a sampling of our latest reviews. And if you want more, be sure to hit our Reviews Archive.

We also went deep in our coverage of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, with a review, strategy guides, and a Commander's diary. Be sure to check that all out.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

The original X-Com: UFO Defense has been one of my all time favorite games for almost 20 years. There’s something about the combination of naming soldiers after friends and family members, carefully trying to manage finances and tech trees, and the tense search for hostile aliens in unfamiliar terrain that still excites me to this day. So when it was announced that Firaxis, the developers behind the latest entries in the Civilization series, were going to release a modern update of the 1994 classic I was both supremely excited and ridiculously nervous. Of course I was worried about XCOM: Enemy Unknown for nothing. It turned out to be a fantastic re-imagining of my favorite strategy game that trimmed away a lot of the unnecessary fat and added a few more contemporary elements to create an incredibly compelling experience. Then it was announced that Firaxis and 2K China were going to take that same experience and somehow cram it on to iOS devices. Again I found myself excited and worried at the same time. And again I was worried for nothing. --Rob Rich

Where's My Mickey XL

Disney’s Where’s My Water series has been both a success both financially as well as creatively, with its original incarnation bringing unique physics gameplay and an original character to the table. Now, Disney has expanded the series in part by integrating their known characters into the gameplay. The problem has been that they just haven’t fit all that well: Perry from Phineas & Ferb in Where’s My Perry felt like Disney just slapping a character into the formula, and to me at least, it fell flat. So now, we have Where’s My Mickey, which ramps up the character integration from “secondary character on a Disney Channel animated series” to“ the very face of Disney.” Thankfully, the Disney folks decided that with their superstar, they had to bring their A-game to Where’s My Mickey and by gosh golly, they nailed it. --Carter Dotson

Videon

It’s quite difficult to fault Videon. It’s a video recording app that offers mostly everything anyone could want from such a tool. Something that’s bound to be welcomed amongst those planning on recording plenty of videos this summer. Aligning towards many different needs, users can go straight into recording something or choose to change some settings around first. The former is ideal for when the opportunity arises, such as when a child or pet is doing something cute. The latter is great, when planning ahead. --Jennifer Allen

Other 148Apps Network Sites

If you are looking for the best reviews of kids' apps and/or Android apps, just head right over to GiggleApps and AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews these sites served up this week:

GiggleApps

Mini U: Zoo Abracadabra

Mini-U: Zoo Abracadabra for iPad is a charmingly different puzzle app that kids and their parents will both enjoy. This app includes a circus theme where animals create towers holding each other up, creating wondrous shadow-animal shapes. Children are then asked to choose what animal is making up this grand tower from the animal tiles one can select, seen at the bottom of the screen. There are three different levels of difficulty within this app that include an increase in the number both of the animal tiles to choose from as well as the number of the animals balancing together, creating most interesting shapes. --Amy Solomon

Dr. Panda Handyman

My family and I are always excited when a new role-playing app becomes available as these types of apps allow children to imagine themselves performing various occupations as well as to engage in pretend play, making these apps favorites in our house. This new app, Dr. Panda Handyman, is such an app, as children work alongside Dr. Panda helping to fix damaged objects of animal friends and neighbors seen within five separate scenes. I enjoy how the different animal connected to each scene may vary as do some of the details found in these scenes. It makes me smile to see some old faces from other apps such as the polar bears or elephants or monkeys, as well as new characters to meet along the way. --Amy Solomon

AndroidRundown

Little Nick: The Great Escape

Little Nick is a running game game that is based on the popular Nicolas TV and books character. It’s a running game, and the abbreviated top-down view is quite reminiscent of endless runners like Temple Run. In this adventure, we ditch jungle temples and crazed monkey-ish beasts for somewhat suburban streets and Mr Goodman in pursuit. And, we get a bike! For background, Nick is framed for the dastardly destruction of a window, and takes off out the property gates on his two-wheeler to escape the vengeful Goodman after him. But these city streets are littered with obstacles, making escape especially hard. The graphics were more than decent, with good animations. --Tre Lawrence

Warmly

Warmly is an atypical productivity offering from The Chaos Collective that seemingly wants to make the descriptive term “alarm” a misnomer by changing the way we do alarms and wake patterns in the first place. The opening user interface is a clear cut celebration of simplicity, and hints at the design elements that govern the entire app. It gives a scroll-through window for setting the time (with an AM/PM toggle), and nine (9) big square buttons. After a scheduling check-off and an off and ok button, THAT’S IT. Laid against the soothing yellow backdrop, the relatively minimalist viewers are hard not to like. --Tre Lawrence

Neon Snap

Neon Snap is one of those games that soothes the mine just by looking it. With the tetrominoes and gridded space, it is practically impossible to not think of Tetris, if just a little. It’s advisable to avoid getting too caught up in the similarities, as Neon Snap sorta turns the gameplay over on its head. The developer uses simple graphics to frame the game. With a mostly dark backgrounds, the play pieces are brightly colored, and the color of the pieces depends on their respective shapes. The animations are decent; rotations are handled in a utilitarian manner, and everything comes together with a minimalist feel. --Tre Lawrence

This week at 148Apps.com, everything was about end of the year wrap-ups and countdowns. Carter Dotson compiled an extremely helpful multi-part 148Apps Top Apps of 2012, and he also gave us his Favorite Things of 2012: "In particular, Super Crate Box and Super Hexagon both left me in states of constant desire, wanting to get that high score while tackling the immense difficulty both games presented. Yet there was one consistent thread in both: failure was usually my fault, the factor of poor execution rather than random chance. It makes success feel all that more empowering. The byproduct of it is constant failure, and frequent profanity usage."

Oprah has nothing on Carter. Read his full list of Favorite Things on 148Apps.

What's a New Year's celebration without pizza? Is it any wonder, then, that Amy Solomon at GiggleApps.com reviewed Bamba Pizza: "This is the fourth year my son will receive play food as a large part of his holiday and birthday gifts from my husband and me. Although he has different hobbies as well that are demonstrated in the other toys he plays with, not a day goes by that it isn’t a birthday for a doll or stuffed animal where pizza is always served, along with cake, cookies and many other selections.

Although I would never expect Bamba Pizza or other apps like it to take the place of playing with toys in the real world, my son also enjoys playing with these types of apps when away from the house or when lying in bed before or after a full night’s sleep, when play food items are not welcome."

Read all of Amy's review at GiggleApps.

The holidays also present endless opportunities for taking photos. AndroidRundown.com reviewer Tre Lawrence showcases a venerable iOS photo app, now making the transition to Android: "There was a time, not all that long ago, when cameras on phones were not too hot. The hardware was rudimentary, and the accompanying software bordered on the silly. Pictures were not that great.
Since then, it has gotten better… much better. So much so, that for many people, their smartphone cameras are the cameras for everyday use.

Snapseed (from Nik Software) is an app that looks to perfect the picture-taking experience. It is a photo-editing title that incorporates a lot of the features people have come to expect with apps of this type. Being chock-full of fan favorite filters definitely makes it an interesting offering."

Read Tre's full review at AndroidRundown.

By this time next week, we will be in 2013, so all of us at 148Apps would like to take this moment to thank you for your constant readership throughout 2012. Without you, loyal reader, we simply wouldn't exist! Thank you, and Happy New Year from 148Apps!

Camera+ has long been one of the best choices for a Camera app replacement. This version update brings some really interesting features like Front Flash, Live Exposure display, and a non-intrusive Horizontal Level. If you have been interested in what your iPhone camera can really do, give Camera+ a shot.

The folks at tap tap tap have done it again. Not only have they released an update to Camera+ that supports the iPhone 5, but TechCrunch reports that they have released a new Camera+ app for the iPad (on sale for $0.99). And if you have both, you can even use iCloud to sync your lightbox photos. Awesome!

People love taking pictures with their iPhones and since the cameras keep getting better so does the quality of the pictures themselves. With a seemingly endless supply of potentially great snapshots out there, Pictorama figured that there was probably some money to be made. The good news is that they are letting the users get in on the action.

The process is simple. Users take a photo, give it tags, and upload it. From there, it is judged by a panel of experts and fellow enthusiasts. If it’s approved, the picture is then put on the marketplace and every time it gets purchased, the photographer gets a cut. Beyond that, everyone from professionals to amateur shutterbugs can get feedback from the community and even share knowledge of their own. Pictorama is also offering 0.25€ per accepted picture upfront.

“Turn passion for pictures into profit.” Pictorama is available now for free on the App Store.

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