Owning an iPhone is an awesome user experience. While the hardware is fantastic, especially with the iPhone X, it’s really about the software and user interface that make it such an incredible device. iMessage and Facetime come to the top of the list when it comes to apps that are the best at what they do and don’t exist anywhere outside of the Apple environment. Other Apple software experiences like Bluetooth pairing and best in class battery management are enough to make most people stick with Apple because Android doesn’t do it nearly as well. However, there are a few instances where Google-developed apps just beat out Apple. If you own an iPhone, you should strongly consider taking the time to install these official Google-developed apps on your device. The apps are better in ways that aren’t glaring, but it’s the little details and nuances that make them heads and shoulders better than Apple’s idea of what software should be.

Here are 3 essential Google apps every iPhone user should install

Google Photos

How many times have you run out of space on your iPhone? Or do you know someone who has run out of space? One of the biggest culprits of space consumption is photos and videos. While Apple does offer iCloud as a way to offload your photos and videos to free up space, it also charges users a monthly fee they simply do not want to pay. Apple tried to help by upgrading base memory options on the current 2018 iPhones, but even with that, people are still running out of space. It makes sense – kids, foods, pets, events, etc. – people just have more reasons to take pictures these days, especially in the age of Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook.

Google Photos offers 100% free photo and video backup to all Android and iOS users. If you want to store very high-resolution photos (over 16MP), Google gives you 15GB of free space to store those photos uncompressed. Anything under 16MP, which all iPhone cameras are, can be stored at an uncompressed size completely unlimited and free of charge. All you need is a Google account, which almost everyone has a Gmail account, and to install the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad. Sign in, go to the basic settings, and your iPhone will backup over WiFi (or cellular if you prefer). Once backed up, Photos will offer you the option to delete the local files from your iPhone while you keep everything else in the cloud. Not only is this great for keeping your space optimized, but it’s also used to ensure you never lose a precious memory by backing everything up to the cloud.

Waze Navigation and Live Traffic

 

Waze is technically a subsidiary of Google, but since’s it’s owned by them I’m adding it to this list. Waze is yet another mapping and GPS tool, but it’s way better than even Google Maps and especially more than Apple Maps. Why is it better? For my own personal experience, it offers routes to me that save me a ton of time. It’s challenged what I have thought is the best and fastest routes (some of 20 years) and offered me alternatives that I’ve tried with skepticism only to be surprised with the time-saving results. It also adds a social component to the mix by allowing real users to report incidents along your route. On my last trip home to see family in Sacramento, it helped me slow down in the nick of time before I passed a California Highway Patrol officer thanks to a user who had reported seeing him just minutes earlier. You won’t find a more helpful GPS app than Waze and it’s completely free to use.

Gmail

Apple’s official Mail app is a good one, but it’s not nearly as good as Gmail when it comes to sorting promotions and spam from real emails. The official Gmail app should be installed on every iPhone to help users sort the junk from the good, and because it’s free to use. You can also browse another email on Gmail from Yahoo, Outlook, Aol and just about any other email account as well. Gmail offers quick responses to each email that make responding to emails even easier.

There are quite a few more official Google apps in the App Store, but these are our three most important recommended apps.