Many of us have come to rely on the smart phone in our pocket for far more than phone calls and text messages. Software options expand the smart phone to make it a functional work tool and an entertaining toy. While you might have already added Twitter ability to your phone, figured out how to update your Flickr and learned to check your Facebook on the go, you can bring more personality to your Palm or Android phone with applications specific to the gay community.

A quick search of the Android marketplace on my Droid Eris revealed 10 applications specifically geared toward the gay community; however, others may be a useful addition to your social life. There is a text based chat application called Gay Chat available; however, it is rather poorly rated. A more popular and more useful application is Michael Quach’s Bars & Clubs. Use this application, available free in the Android marketplace to find the closest gay bar. It will also guide you to adult book stores, happy hour, and wine bars. If you’re looking to dress up your phone with pretty pictures, image applications including Martin Mazza AdultStar and The Horniest Guys offer a low cost option. Ringtones are widely available for your Droid smart phone, regardless of your preferences. Great Lakes Development Little Black Book is a free application that allows you to manage a busy social life. Organize your dating contacts, send everyone else to voicemail when you’re on a date, and enjoy password protection for an affordable 99 cents.

The best addition to your Palm smart phone is David Demchuk’s highly rated Little Black Book organizer. Designed to be inclusive of gender and sexuality, this application allows you to keep your social life in order and avoid unwanted awkwardness. Gay city guides are available for some cities on the Palm OS, making navigating gay bars and finding the right neighborhoods for socializing easier than you might think. Add a rainbow or gay theme to your Palm Pre to give it a bit of color and style or coordinate it with your phone case.

We’ll be fair and say that the gay application options are somewhat few and far between for your Android or Palm OS phones, at least in comparison to the iPhone. Those of us without an AT&T contract probably deem it quite worthwhile to skip access to GayCommunity or Grindr in exchange for better service and our preferred smart phones.

Just in case you were wondering what the title means: Gay Mobile (cell) Phone Applications – things that you add to your phone to help your gay lifestyle. ‘What, like listings of Ikea stores and bathhouses you mean?’ No silly, little gadgets, or ad-ons, or call them what you will, that enhance your mobile phone or hand-held device.

For example: Grindr. Here you have a small GPS targeting device that keeps track of you wherever you are. Great for those mornings when you wake up in a stranger’s bed, in a strange town and you can’t remember how you got there. But it will also track other guys who are using the same application, so you can easily find guys who are cruising near you. So you basically have an application that lets you use your phone as a hook-up or matchmaker device, and it will only cost you $2.99 a month to add on.

If you don’t want to pay for your extras, how about GayCities? This is an application that will assist you when looking for gay bars, clubs, beaches and cafes and it comes with a mapping device installed too – so you can follow the routes to your own favourite kind of gay hangout. And it’s a free. The other option for this, that I could find listed, was MyGayGo, which is a similar, but it seems better, application but which costs you $2.99 a month, like Grindr does – but it gets better reviews and that’s probably because of the general rule: the more you pay the better you get.

I checked out a blog post from The Mobile App Company and found one that was about the ‘World’s first iPhone app for the gay community.’ Actually it was all rather vague, the post was made in February 2009, so is fairly out of date and all it told me was that there is an application available from their store and through the iTunes store. I did some further checking and found a little more information about this new app:

Brothersoft.com has the details – run a search for The Gay Community App 1.0.5. It seems that back in February the application was in beta testing and struggling a little, now though it’s available for download and there are specs: It’s Freeware, it’s for iPhones with OS 2.2.1 or higher, and it is there to help you connect with members of the GLBT community. How? Well, it looks like it basically does what the Grindr and MyGayGo applications do – list places, user GPS to find others with the same device etc. But it also contains a profile area where you can put information about yourself, you can add up to four pics there, you can say what/who you are looking for, you can connect with your Facebook and Twitter pages and keep a list of your buddies. And others with the same application can see this information too of course – so it does look like its going a bit further than the other applications mentioned above. And it’s free, don’t forget.

Not having an iPhone myself (shock horror) I have to admit to finding some of the information about these applications a bit bewildering. But that’s good, because most of what I read I understood, even though it didn’t relate to me. The point being that if you want to find good, gay applications for your own iPhone then you simply need to look up those that I’ve mentioned and you will (should) find easy to follow pages, easy to read instructions and clearly set out options for how to get them, and what to do once you have. I mean if I can understand it, will you will have no trouble.

We plan to do some research on this subject and bring you all of the top gay iPhone Applications but until then lets bring you some that we do know about.  Everyone I know has an Iphone these days.  At least most of my friends, co-workers, and classmates.  I have been holding out for the new Palm Pre from Sprint and hoping that it will have some gay applications as well for these.

Here are some popular iPhone Apps:

1.  Grindr – At GetGrindr.com you can download the app to meet guys near you on your iPhone.  Sort of like a Manhunt.net for the iPhone addicts.

2. The Gay Community App – launched in Sydney, Australia earlier this year has generated a buzz around the world.  This is a unique iPhone App allowing users to chat and meet like-minded people in their communities they live in or travel to.  It works by using the iPhones GPS and navigation to let them know whats going on in the local gay scene, make new friends, and possibly find a hottie near you.

You can find this download for the iPhone at gaycommunityapp.com or in the Apple iTunes App Store.  One of the neat things this app has is that it has a Gaydar search listing other app users by distance from your location or from one that you specify.  Facebook and twitter style profile updates.  There is a buddy list to keep track of people and location mapping system via Google Maps.

3.  G.I.R.L. Dance Radio - I at first thought this was a lesbian radio station only but I guess it means gay as in all gays and just an acronym for the G.I.R.L.  But if you want an Iphone application free with streaming of hot dance music you should download the Gay Internet Radio Live app which gives you a 128k and 64k stream.  They even have an instant feedback link to email station DJ’s.  The song information is displayed on your iPhone on each track so you can buy it when you get home and goto MasterBeat or from your phone.  This is great for working out and not having to hear the same dance playlist you always had.

4. Gaycities – iPhone app to rate gay-friendly bars, hotels, clubs, and beaches worldwide.

5.  MyGayGo – similar to the GayCities app which lets you locate gay businesses near you from publishers of Frontiers and IN.

6. Yelp – not a gay app but you can add all your gay friends on here and get the best restaurants in the United States when you travel.  Does not work yet for France where you damn well need it.  I had one of the worst Mexican food dishes there (hey they told me it was Tex-Mex I was a “tourist”)!

7.  Pride – free app that turns the screen into a rainbow flag that fades away into the word PRIDE.  For those of you who get amused by screen savers and 80s videos.  Seems like you could do this with a Nokia phone why need an iPhone?

8. Skout is a personals site offering a iphone app you can use on your new iPhone 3GS.  You can download it free at boyahoy.com.

I hope they develop some of these same applications for the new Palm Pre coming out in May.  The Pre is set to be the next best thing to the iPhone for those of us Sprint users.

Updated iPhone apps