This probably has the largest customizable options for your bulbs. Hue LIFX Scintillator - this app supports both the Hue bulbs and LIFX bulbs. It doesn't offer effects, but it's clean and pretty, support alarms and timers, with the option to do geeky things as it has a desktop companion app Hue Server that supports scripts and automations directly from your computer. Hue Remote - I think if you just want a straight up remote to turn on/off your lights and create scenes, this is the best looking one. These are some of my recommendations (for iOS) :
I would still leave the app installed on your phone cause it's the only one that could update your Hue if there's a latest firmware. The good thing is that the Hue has an open API, so there are third party apps that you can use instead of the official one. It has some useable features like alarms and timers and geofencing, all with caveats - geofencing is too much of a battery-drain to be useful, and while the alarms and timers work solidly, I wish you can set multiple parameters instead of just time (like Wemo's better app) and support effects for each light scenes. And that is a really big problem for a device that you control/ interact with largely from your smartphone. The official iPhone app from Philips is buggy, unintuitive and is either sub-par at its best or bad at its worst. I wish Philips has made a smarter bridge that can store the current light setting in the bridge itself. Basically all light settings are not just controlled by the app on your phone, but remain 'on' as long as the app is running, which is terrible for apps that support light effects (apps like Goldee and Scintillator found a solution by asking access to your mic to save battery life). (Although the bridge is also really dumb, which is a bad choice on Philips' part. I did have a problem connecting the bulbs to an app, and that is where Hue's biggest weakness is - software. People have had problems with disconnections and the bridge not recognizing the bulbs, but I haven't had such a problem so far. I think on the hardware side, Hue is really a solid product.
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