Here’s a new iPhone app to help you preview your iOS application icons called Iconsider ($2.99). The workflow is that you simply place your png files in dropbox, and Iconsider will take the file and preview on a sample homescreen. You can change the App Name, choose whether the gloss overlay is applied, and simulate a non-retina screen if its on an iPhone 4 or above. Once previewed you can then email a screenshot to your client for them to consider.
It does all of this very well, but could really do with expanding much further. I would like to test spotlight and settings icons in-situ as well, and consider an iPad version absolutely essential. Its also not the most effective way to preview how an icon looks - you would need to test how it compares with other icons, rather than in isolation. You could do this by installing other app icons, but that’s a bit time consuming.
Here’s a test I ran with the icon files for PlanGrid:
As you can see, it takes all the various icon sizes, but only really previews the App Icon.
You can of course preview your icons on top of a screenshot on any desktop graphics app, but with colour and saturation differences, you can’t beat testing on the actual device. At the moment I use xScope Mirror to test on iPhone and iPad, but an iOS app that could take all the exported PNGs and simulate them all in their various contexts would be fantastic.
In short, Iconsider has potential, but needs more thought to become a useful tool.