iPhone Bible Apps

Ever since I have had my iPhone, I have been looking for the perfect Bible App. Back when I got my first Palm 10 years ago, I found the Laridian Bible for the Palm. This was a great application for my Palm and I got a lot of use out of it.

Unfortunately, when I moved to a Blackberry I was not able to find a Bible application that matched the quality of the application I had on my Palm. Because of this, I did not often use the Bible on my Blackberry. The Blackberry app was slow and much less intuitive.

Enter my new iPhone. With tens of thousands of apps for the iPhone, I was certain I would be able to find a good quality Bible app that would surpass the quality of my former Palm application. At the very least I would be able to find an app that was at least on par.

I have since found three applications that have made me happy. Each of these three Bible apps have their strengths and weaknesses. There are other apps out there. But these three stand out for me.

First, let me say I am biased to modern translations. There are many applications which allow access to the King James Version. But when I am looking for a Bible application, I am looking for one that has access to the NIV, ESV, and/or the NLT.

YouVersion

The first application I found was the widely popular YouVersion by the people at LifeChurch.tv. What is good about this app is that it free and has all the major translations available. It is also connected with the YouVersion website. The YouVersion app is backed by a large community and the app allows you to contribute and interact with that community.

What I don’t like about the YouVersion app is that most of the Bibles are available through your online connection. What this means is that if your connection is slow or worse case, you have no connection, the app will not work very well. A second thing that is problematic for me with the YouVersion app is that it scrolls the text. My preference for reading is to read by page (similar to the Amazon app).

Laridian Pocket Bible

The second app was a great surprise. I discovered the Laridian had come up with an iPhone app called the PocketBible. I was excited about this. What made me excited about this was my license for my former Palm application worked for my iPhone. I would have all translations I purchased for my Palm available on my iPhone.

This app is very different from the YouVersion app. Both apps are free. However, you need to purchase the individual translations for the Laridian Pocket Bible. These typically run between $15-20 each, but you can often find coupons. The advantage is you download the translations directly onto your iphone. There is no need to rely upon the internet connection when reading the Bible. The obvious downfall of the PocketBible is that the translations are not free.

I like the interface of the PocketBible better than YouVersion. With YouVersion you need to type in the the name of the book you are looking up. PocketBible offers and easily accessible table of contents (see pic below) that allows you to easily look up specific verses. Another thing I appreciate about the PocketBible is that you navigate by page turning rather than scrolling. Again this is something that is likely personal preference. You should also note the PocketBible does not offer the online community experience of YouVersion.

The biggest downfall of the PocketBible which is a major problem is that it is buggy. I often find that when I turn pages it will skip multiple pages at a time. This can be frustrating. This problem seems to be a frequent occurrence and because of this unreliability I typically use YouVersion.

Update: Craig from Laridian contacted me after doing this review.  You can see the his reply in the comments below.  It seems I did not fully understand how the navigation worked.  It was not that the program was buggy.  The problem was user error – Me!  Now that I better understand the navigation, I am much, much more happy with this app and will likely go back to using this app as my primary app.  Craig points out there are 9 free Bibles available from Laridian and other books.  One thing I have always appreciated about Laridian is their customer support.  They have always been helpful and good to their customers.  They are a company that cares!  Keep up the good work Laridian.

Logos Bible App

The third application is my new favorite. I just discovered it. It is the Logos Bible App. This app is also free like the others. It is linked to the Logos Bible Software which is available for Macs and PC’s. I was disappointed the NIV was not available without paying for it, but the NLT and the ESV were both available for free. Translations are available through the online connection, but individual versions can be purchased and loaded directly onto the iPhone. What is really exciting about this app is that it also has Greek and Hebrew versions available. This is probably not important to most people, but having attended seminary and learned Greek and Hebrew, this is something quite exciting to me.

What I also really like about the Logos Bible Software is the clean interface. There are no menus or anything else when you are reading the text. Just the text and nothing else at all. To get the menus back, all you need to do is tap the screen and the menus will pop up.

I don’t have the Logos Bible software installed on my computer. The Logos version 4 software is not yet available for the Mac. It seems to me that the combination of the desktop/laptop software and the iPhone app could be a powerful combination. But the software is not cheap.

In summary, any of these programs will do you well. My favorite is the Logos app and is my new default iPhone Bible app. You should also know each Bible app has daily reading guides, but I don’t use this feature on the iPhone.

One other app that might be worth checking out is the Olive Tree app. I have not tried it, but it looks like another promising option.

Happy reading!