KIK Messenger
Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace
If you'd rather us a more text-based messaging tool, try KIK. It's even closer an experience to text chat darling WhatsApp, letting users share photos, set up group chats and receive visual confirmation that your target has received your message, all presented in a clean and tidy style that's right at home within WP8's slick layout.
And it's free. It's a no-lose situation.
Wikipedia
Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace
The enormous encyclopaedia doesn't have an official Windows Phone 8 app, but that's not really an issue as this indie option is absolutely superb.
The developer has incorporated live tile support, voice searching, an offline mode, article revision history viewing and much more into this app, making it the best way to scan for possibly true facts via your Lumia. But be careful.
There are a few crappy "Wikipedia" apps on the WP8 app store and some terrible paid search tools, so check the user feedback before installing.
Netflix
Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace
One of the blowing-up big names of the mobile world has been available on Windows Phone 8 for some time, offering subscribers of the streaming film service a simple way to user their mobiles as a miniature portable TV.
Obviously it's useless without a subscription, mind, although newcomers signing up today qualify for a one-month free trial, along with unlimited access to the site's archives.
Sleep
Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace
As well as the high-profile, Triple-A monster apps, there are also a fair number of quirky little things to play with on WP8. Sleep describes itself as a "sound mixer" tool, playing "soothing" music to the user under the pretence that it may help him or her get to sleep.
It's more likely to remind you your phone's there on the beside cabinet at 3:45am and encourage you to wake up and check your emails and go on Twitter for a bit, but still: that's also quite useful in itself.
Mixtapes
Download from the Windows Phone Marketplace
For music fans after something a little off piste, there this. Mixtapes is built around user-generated playlists of tracks pulled from YouTube's enormous directory of tunes, letting players stream endless mixes put together by others.
It's basically a personal radio station you compile then share online, or a great way to root out online rarities and collect them for listening yourself without the hassle of downloading/buying/uploading them individually.
Background playback and live tile support make it feel like a posh new WP8 experience, too.
