iPhone and iTouch LDS (Mormon) Scripture Applications Review and Comparision

6 Dec

I have used three different versions of the scriptures for the iPhone/iTouch and I like them all for different reasons! I thought I would give a little rundown of the difference in hopes that it might help some others that are looking for scriptures for their iPhone or iTouch. Obviously if you have an iPhone you can get to the scriptures online, so this is for those that want to do more/faster/or offline (iTouch).

Here is a little breakdown of the functionality with pro’s and con’s as I see it.

The Scriptures (iTunes, Website)
Developer: Lee Falin

Cost: $FREE!
Search: Yes
Chapter Summaries: Yes
Footnotes: Yes
Topical Guide: Yes
Bible Dictionary: Yes
Marking Capabilities: No
Notes Capabilities: No
Bookmarking Capabilities: No
Multiple Languages: No
Settings Page: Yes – change font size, style, alignment, night viewing, remember position settings. (UPDATED… I originally had this wrong! Thanks Lee!)
Change Font/Size: No… maybe… can’t see a way to do it.
Navigation: All screens have a scroll navigation/search button.
Developer Actively Updates: Yes… today I got the latest!
Stability: Great! Haven’t had it crash at all.

Review:

I must say I am very pleased with this application. It is fast. The latest version (released today I think) has study helps and a very nice search feature that updates with each letter entered. It is free… and the developer (a PhD student who could no doubt charge for this app and use the money has made it not only free… but asked that all proceeds be donated to the Perpetual Education Fund. The only major feature I would like to see is some marking capabilities… but that is on his “not yet” list… so maybe one day.

Potential Audience: People that just want to have the scriptures on their devices so they have them with them for reference, occasional reading, etc.

Rating: B+: I would really like to see annotation capabilities… but it’s Free… can’t beat that!

LDS Books (iTunes, Website)
Developer: Terry Evans (I actually think Terry and his wife work together on this one… but I can’t find her name… How cool is that to work with your wife on a project like this?)

Cost: $14.99
Search: Yes
Chapter Summaries: No
Footnotes: No
Topical Guide: No
Bible Dictionary: No
Marking Capabilities: Yes.. and they are AWESOME. Backup capabilities… underline, highlight, change font color… etc, etc.
Notes Capabilities: Yes – and you can even show them inline with the scriptures.
Bookmarking Capabilities: Yes
Multiple Languages: No
Navigation: All screens have a home button/search button.
Settings Screen: Yes – Fonts, Colors, Alignment, Display options, Landscape, and others.
Change Font/Size: Yes (pinch and settings)
Other Features: Auto scroll feature, can even control via tilt. Backup Feature!
Developer Actively Updates: Yes! Also got the latest today, which prompted me to write this!
Stability: Pretty good… I had a couple of times it crashed today, but that is to be expected with a new update. It is normally really good!

Review:

I have to say that I am very pleased with this application, and I use this one as my main scripture application. I love the marking capabilities. I am big on interacting with technology, and interacting with the scriptures. This brings those two worlds together and I have noticed my study is much much better because I can mark the scriptures.

The only downside is that there are no extra’s like chapter headings/footnotes/etc. I have not doubt Terry could do it, but from what I gather he is really big on making sure he has the rights to distribute that content… not just scrape it off of the church website, and that is much harder to get since it is not public content, and he is charging for this app. I hope he can figure out a way to make that work, but it is still a great app!!

Potential Audience: People that would like their phones to be their scriptures. People that like to mark scriptures!

Rating: A-: I would like to see some study extra’s some day…

Scriptures (iTunes, Website)
Developer: Michael Jensen – He developed the first online ReadScriptures.com for the iPhone before Apps were an option and make an application out of it when they came out. He was the first to release a LDS scripture app in the App Store

Cost: $14.99
Search: Yes
Chapter Summaries: Yes
Footnotes: Yes
Topical Guide: Yes
Bible Dictionary: Yes
Marking Capabilities: No
Notes Capabilities: No
Bookmarking Capabilities: No
Multiple Languages: No
Navigation: All screens have a home library/search.
Settings Screen: Yes – change font size, style, chapter summaries off, invert colors
Change Font/Size: Yes (settings)
Developer Actively Updates: Yes… at least he used to… I haven’t seen one in a while though.
Stability: Good… but slow.

Review:

It’s strengths are definitely in it’s content and interface. It not only has the scriptures, chapter headings, footnotes, and all scripture helps, it also has hymns, teachings of the prophets, preach my gospel, true to the faith, Sunday School study guides, Quotes, Joseph Smith Translation, Proclamation on the Family, Lectures on Faith, Living Christ, For the Strength of Youth, the US Constitution, and even a large section of good quotes.

The user interface is also very nice. Easy to ready. You can instantly jump to verses when you get to chapters.

Really the big downside is the speed. I think that the large amount of content takes a long time to load… even when navigating into books and chapters. I believe it also cost me $19.99 when it was first released (I think because it was the first one released), but then went down to $14.99… that makes me sad that I paid more…

Potential Audience: This would be the same people that are interested in Lee Falin’s first application. Those that would like to have a reference with you. It really is quite an impressive library of information to be carrying around with you, and if Lee’s doesn’t cut it for you… this one certainly will!

Rating: B-: Too much for what it does, and the speed really detracts when you are trying to look stuff up quickly in class. You’re supposed to be faster than those with paper scriptures… not slower…

Other Applications worth Mentioning

There is also a fourth scripture app called Scriptures from Two Desk Software (iTunes) but it the website link doesn’t even work. Jacob Thurman, the developer, doesn’t appear to be updating it anymore. It has about the same functionality as the first application, but it costs money, so I haven’t tried it.

Conclusion

So, if you just want the scriptures for reference, Lee’s is great. If you want a lot of stuff… go with the Michael’s. If you want to mark the scriptures, go with Terry’s. Their all great in their own way. I’m just glad to see the LDS tech community actively developing applications.

In a future post I will write about some of the other LDS apps out there and my ideas for some other good apps for the LDS community!

Interesting Things I Read Today – November 21, 2008

Jeff’s Finds – December 17, 2008

Listen to Conference on iPhone/iTouch

Jeff’s Finds – November 24, 2008

Use Sudoku to Teach Scripture Mastery

18 Responses for "iPhone and iTouch LDS (Mormon) Scripture Applications Review and Comparision"

Lee Falin December 6th, 2008 at 6:26 am 1
Hi Jeff,

The Scriptures actually does have a settings screen (which is where you can adjust the font and size). It is located in the iPhone settings app.
Michael Jensen December 6th, 2008 at 9:18 am 2
Jeff, great reviews! I've got an update for the ReadScriptures.com version that should be out in about a week with the speed issues fixed and with some other goodies! Thanks!
Jeff VanDrimmelen December 7th, 2008 at 5:52 am 3
Thanks Lee… I actually had your confused and put your setting in the wrong review… Sorry about that. I have updated the post.

I guess that is what you get when you write posts at 4:00 in the morning when you can't sleep.
Jeff VanDrimmelen December 7th, 2008 at 5:52 am 4
Awesome Michael, I look forward to see the new application!!
dhsundwall December 7th, 2008 at 12:05 pm 5
What a great idea for a post. In fact I was going to the same thing but you beat me to it.

Thanks for the reviews.
Terry Evans December 7th, 2008 at 1:48 pm 6
Jeff,

Thank you for taking the time to write such a comprehensive overview! LDS Books does have a settings screen which you can access from the main Books view (it's the little gear/flower looking icon). You can change quite a few applications preferences and also font style, font size, colors, margins, alignment etc. in there. However, it does not have it's own settings area located inside of the Settings iPhone application. We decided to locate it all within the application so a user doesn't need to exit to adjust settings.

Terry Evans
StandardWorksApp.com
Austin December 7th, 2008 at 6:06 pm 7
I use all 3, and find that I like the interface, marking capability and speed of LDS Books, the content of Scriptures, and the price of The Scriptures.

The LDS Books interface allows me to jump around so much easier the Scriptures does, but the content that is provided with Scriptures makes it more useful, and if I could only have one app, I would have Scriptures.

My hope is that Scriptures works on the speed, marking and interface, while LDS Books starts adding more content. I bought both and will continue to use both as long as neither is complete.
Jeff VanDrimmelen December 8th, 2008 at 7:50 am 8
Thanks for the note Terry.. I updated the blog to reflect this. Another casualty of early morning writing. I thought I had found it before.

This also gave me a chance to test out the backup feature! That is awesome! Thanks for including that!
Jeff VanDrimmelen December 8th, 2008 at 7:54 am 9
Austin, thanks for your comment. You make some great points and I have to agree… yesterday in church I used both the Scriptures app (when I needed to get to some General Conference Talks being references) and the LDSBooks app (in Sunday School as we studied … I marked and made some notes for myself).
Michael Jensen December 28th, 2008 at 6:53 am 10
Jeff, I just uploaded a new update to the Scriptures app (by ReadScriptures.com) and it has fixed all the speed issues (it is ZIPPY!) and added Bookmarks and History. History is really sweet because it tracks where you've been, kind of like a breadcrumb trail. Makes it easy to get back to where you've been recently. The other great feature is you can update bookmarks, so if you have a bookmark for “Family Scripture Study”, when you're done reading you just update that bookmark with where you are.

We are finishing up highlighting right now, and a few other features…

Thanks!
Melodie January 19th, 2009 at 7:47 am 11
We just love our Jensen scriptures-how convenient and compact! The only thing I'm wondering about is why you cannot view hymns in the same way as if you opened a hymnal book-you can only see the words, which makes it difficult to know what notes to sing. Have I perhaps missed an update?
John Smedley January 19th, 2009 at 1:40 pm 12
is there anyone that can help me with some kind of app for my ipod touch that will let me catagorize all my church leadership contacts by organization or group?
Jeff VanDrimmelen January 20th, 2009 at 8:43 am 13
I think Michael can probably respond to this better, but my guess is that that would require an entirely new funtionality that isn't currently in the application, namely a PDF view of some sort. That would be possible, but more than likely it would require a lot of scrolling in and out to read.

Good idea though… I too would love to have the parts to sing. I normally just sing melody when I am using only the words.
Jeff VanDrimmelen January 20th, 2009 at 8:45 am 14
You know, I have started playing around with iPhone development and you could manually create something like this, but it would take a lot of time and need to be updated all to frequently.

That is a great idea for an app though. If they could recreate some of the amazing Palm applications out there that help with leadership (and a lot of other categories) that would be an awesome sell. You developers can check out this website for some ideas!

http://www.palmlds.com/
Jeff VanDrimmelen January 20th, 2009 at 9:43 am 15
I think Michael can probably respond to this better, but my guess is that that would require an entirely new funtionality that isn't currently in the application, namely a PDF view of some sort. That would be possible, but more than likely it would require a lot of scrolling in and out to read.

Good idea though… I too would love to have the parts to sing. I normally just sing melody when I am using only the words.
Jeff VanDrimmelen January 20th, 2009 at 9:45 am 16
You know, I have started playing around with iPhone development and you could manually create something like this, but it would take a lot of time and need to be updated all to frequently.

That is a great idea for an app though. If they could recreate some of the amazing Palm applications out there that help with leadership (and a lot of other categories) that would be an awesome sell. You developers can check out this website for some ideas!

http://www.palmlds.com/
Terry Evans February 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm 17
Just a quick note that we've now added the ability to create your own footnotes and cross-references. Every word in the entire scriptures can have as many references and footnotes as you'd like.
JR Peterson December 8th, 2009 at 6:53 pm 18
Hi Jeff, long time!

I just got an iPhone not that long ago, and I downloaded the free scriptures app just yesterday. It’s nice and I appreciate your review of each of the different comparable apps.

I don’t know if you’re already aware (and knowing you, you are), but you didn’t mention in your post that the Church is getting close to wrapping up their own official version of the Scriptures for iPhone and Android, with a Blackberry app close behind. Her’s the link to the LDS Tech Wiki: https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/IPhone_Scriptures_Application

I also believe that Lee has made significant code contributions to the project. https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/Talk:IPhone_Scriptures_Application

Anyone have an idea when the official release will happen?