5 Free Useless iPhone Apps All the Cool Kids Are Downloading

Downloading iPhone apps on a budget? Don't have money to invest in Super Monkey Ball and Texas Hold 'Em? Still want something fun on your iPhone that will let you keep from getting bored in meetings and entertain the kids in the checkout line? Fear not; here are five completely useless iPhone apps you can download for free that should entertain even the most jaded child or cube denizen.

1. Tap Tap Revenge

Tap Tap Revenge is a game that should be familiar to anyone who's ever played Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, or any other musical rhythm. game. Using three colored strings with dropping balls, the game lets you "play" along with the musical track by tapping the balls just before they strike the bottom. Four levels of play and additional songs you can download keep you from boredom, and you can challenge friends by sending your score.

2. Rotary Dialer

Are you finding the iPhone dialer too boring and simple to use? Do you long for the simple times when phones weighed 25 pounds and packed a wallop if flung against a wall? If you can answer yes to either of those questions, Rotary Dialer may be for you. Simulating the old-time rotary phones, Rotary Dialer allows you to click and drag the dial to input the number, then simply click to dial. While the motion is almost the same as a real rotary phone, without the stuttering sound you'd hear with the real thing, it's just missing a little something. Still, it's fun to show the kids how things were before Twitter.

3. Bubble Wrap

Of the five apps, Bubble Wrap is the must-have application. Nothing more than a virtual piece of bubble wrap on your phone (or iPod Touch), the object of the game is to keep popping, bursting as many of the virtual bubbles as you can in the time allowed. Pop them all? Some will reinflate to help you keep upping your score. Bubble Wrap comes complete with sound effects for an effective Zen-like bubble-popping experience. Have a toddler in a waiting room? Bubble Wrap bought me 25 minutes of zero whining. For that, I'd have paid for the app.

4. iPint

iPint, from Carling, is a virtual beer game. Downloadable only for users age 17 and up (thought no one is actually checking), iPint features three levels of play. The object is to slide the full pint glass across the bar to a waiting patron. Achieve that goal, and you are awarded a virtual pint. Watch as the "glass fills," tip the beer to make it look like you are chugging or pouring, or slosh the iPhone around to "spill" the beer out. Be warned, however, that you don't send a virtual pint to a friend, because all that feature does is send a spam email to your friend with instructions to download the app. There's no worse way to annoy non-iPhone users than to send them virtual pints they can't even collect.

5. PhoneSaber

PhoneSaber is the ultimate nerd application, allowing you to achieve Jedi status simply by downloading the free app. You are assigned the same PhoneSaber hilt as everyone else, but then you can choose from five different "blade" colors: yellow, red, green, blue, and my personal favorite, the Mace Windu "bad mother" purple. Once your PhoneSaber is ready for action, swish your phone around and it will make all the same light saber noises you used to make back in the 1980s with a plastic light saber and your own vocal cords.