I really like the iPhone app and think it is well worth the price, which is Free. But it would be worth it if it costs even more. Below is a video of the app reading from 1 Kings.

As you can hear it is high quality dramatized Bible reading. But that is not all Bible.is can do. You can of course read from a few different translations, including the ESV, one of my favorites. It doesn’t have as many modern translations as some apps, but it is free.

The app also lets you highlight text, take notes, and bookmark your favorite verses. Notice from the screen shots below that you can listen to the Bible by simply opening to a verse and hitting the play button. You choose to read from several English translations including ASV, BBE, CEV, ESV, KJV and NRSV. The audio is available only for some translations and sometimes only for the NT.

Dramatized Available: ESV OT & NT, KJV OT & NT, NRSV NT only

Non Dramatized Available: KJV NT only, NRSV NT only

These will have to be downloaded via the More option in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen (see bottom left row of screen shots).

If you want to get through the NT in just 40 days there is an audio listening program available for that (see above right).

You can search the Bible and add bookmarks, highlights, and notes. To add these just tap and hold the verse and the screen above center will appear. Tap the first icon on the top toolbar to add a bookmark. The center icon brings up the highlighting color options. And the third icon is for sharing the verse on Facebook. I wish it had Twitter, but maybe in a future release.

Once the verse is highlighted it will look like the upper left screen shot. The bookmarks list is in the center above and the right is for changing the text size or the language.

Below you will see the More screen options. Share is for sending verses via email. The settings screen is the one on the upper right. Download is for adding translations and audio Bibles. Support and About are what you would expect. The screen shot below on the right is for changing the toolbar icons. You can change the default to include other things as you wish.

I think Bible.is is a great Bible listening app. My only complaints are that it doesn’t have my favorite translations, the HCSB and it doesn’t share via Twitter.  Other than that it is a wonderful app well worth your time to download and use to listen to God’s word. I plan to listen to the program on the go via my car stereo (cassette adapter).

When you open the app you will see the beautiful splash screen that goes away quickly on the iPad due to the device’s speed. It opens in a simple reader mode but can be used in dual pane mode, as you see below.

The app has some of the nice features that I believe all apps should include like note taking, highlighting, low light mode, and bookmarking. To get around in the Bible you can scroll through a chapter, move back and forth a chapter at a time using the arrows in the upper right, or you can tap the icon that looks like a Bible with its ribbon hanging out in the upper left. From there you can scroll through the list of books and chapters. You also choose your versions there using the Version Selector.

With the version selector open, you can add a second pain by selecting a version in the second scrolling list. The available versions are mostly public domain works or foreign language.

If you want to add translations, choose the Manage Bibles item. At the top of the window is the list of what you already have installed. Below that are available translations to download and install for free. You won’t find modern translations like the NIV, NASB, ESV, or HCSB. The developer says that they are too expensive to include in a free app and that is understandable.

Finally, to follow a daily Bible reading, open the window using the same icon in the upper left that you use to jump to another book or translation. The calendar icon reveals the Daily Reading window. There you can choose from the list of plans and then keep track of your progress.

If you don’t want to move around using the book and chapter scrolling wheel, then tap the location button which lets you type in a reference to instantly jump there. It is  in the upper left next to the Book/Chapter icon.

On the bottom left are icons to control your bookmarks, view the history of where you have been in the Bible, add or edit chapter notes, search the Bible or control the automatic scrolling mode. More on auto scrolling in a moment.

Bookmarks can be organized into folders. To add a bookmark simple tap and hold the verse number till the popup window appears. That menu lets you do a number of other things too, including copying the verse to the clipboard for pasting into another app. You can also add highlights of different colors and see what verses you have already highlighted.

There is a history button that shows you the list of where you have been in the app. Tap the passage and it takes you there.

To add a note, tap on the pencil icon. Notes are attached to chapters, not verses. You can then email the notes. This could be a handy way to get notes off the iPad and into a desktop app; just email them to yourself. To view a list of all your notes, from the editor, tap the notes list icon in the upper right end of the toolbar.

To search the app, hit the search icon on the toolbar. It has searching in exact mode which finds exact matches or what is called “close” for when you have a good idea of what you want to find but cannot remember the exact word or phrase. That “fuzzy searching” is a nice feature that some desktop apps don’t handle well.

Holy Bible HD has one really cool feature for reading the Bible. It is called the auto scrolling mode. Tap the down arrow button and the content starts scrolling. You can control the speed via the settings menu button on the lower right hand side.

Speaking of the settings, there are a number of nice customizations you can do to the app. They include changing the font and paragraph modes. You can also change the colors of the font and background. This is how you get low light mode. Simple change the background to a dark color and the font to a light one like white. I wish it was a one tap process but at least it is there.

Bible Reader HD is another simple reader app that is not designed for serious Bible reading. It lacks modern translations but it is also free in the app store. Don’t expect modern translations in the future either. The developer says they are not coming. But for the simple reader apps, it has a lot to offer and should be given serious consideration by users who want a free reader app and don’t need anything but public domain translations.

As you can see the interface is simple. It only works in Portrait mode. The navigation uses back and forward arrows at the bottom left and right to jump back or forward one chapter in the current book of the Bible. To jump further than a chapter at a time, pull down the Bible screen as if you were going to scroll down and it reveals the Table of Contents which then locks into place with two rows – one for books and one for chapters. There is a small button on the upper left corner to open or close the TOC as well. You will see from the video below that the tabs scroll smoothly and very quickly so it doesn’t take long to go from the beginning to the end of the Bible.

holiwrit allows you to copy and paste verses, which is nice. But it does not have notes, bookmarks or highlighting. And you cannot change to a low light mode either.

One final complaint – the name! I don’t like the lowercase name and I keep wanting to type and say “holiwrite” – with an “e” on the end making it write. You will notice in the video I even spelled it wrong in the opening title. Sorry to the developer for that. That is an incredibly nit picky kind of complaint that likely reveals more about me than the app.

holiwrit costs $3.99 or you can try out the Gospels only version for Free.

 Bible HD (BHD from now on) is one of the readers that really needs the Internet to get full use of it. It has the capability of reading multiple translations offline, but not all of them are available offline. For example, my two favorite’s are HCSB and ESV. Neither are available for download. For those reasons I don’t use it much at all. But if you prefer another translation, then you might find it available for download. And if you need a foreign language translation, it is likely here. There are a ton of them.

BHD shines in the area of reading plans. There are more than 20 different plans ranging from read the Bible all the way through in 90 days to just reading Psalms and Proverbs in a year. So if you want a lot of Bible reading plan choices, this is the reader app for you.

One of the features I believe all iPhone/iPad apps should have is a low light reading mode. It is built in via the Settings menu.

Other features included are the ability to search, bookmark verses, share verses via Twitter and email them too.

There are unfortunately a couple of big features missing. First you cannot simply copy a verse or range of verses. This is a feature that should be in every app. You could tap and hold the verse and choose to email or tweet it and then copy the content from the email or Twitter window. But it should be built in.

The other thing missing is all the great stuff that makes the YouVersion web site so cool. When you sign up for a YV account, you get some neat social networking features, like the ability to share content based on a passage. You could post comments, sermons or studies, web sites, etc. on a verse. Also the Groups on YV are great. You can join one of the those available or create one for your church or study group. But you don’t have access to them via the app. This really sets YV apart, but until it is available in the app, then BHD is just another reader that has great Bible reading plans but requires an Internet connection for some of the most popular translations available. Without the ability to copy verses into Pages, then I won’t be using it much.

The interface is much like Windows Explorer with the books of the Bible along the left while the actual Bible is on the right. Above the list of the books of the Bible are buttons for entering your verse to jump to a new passage or for searching to find words and phrases in the Bible. You can easily share Bible passages with the button on the upper left of the Bible pane. Unfortunately it jumps out of the app into the Mail app. You have to manually go back into the app afterwards if you want to continue to read.

To zoom in or out you simply use the pinch gesture. I wish every Bible reader/study app had this feature. Another feature I wish they all had was the one demonstrated below:

One of the best features is the low light mode, seen above. This is handy for reading in dark rooms either at night or if your church lowers the light during the worship service. The mode is toggled on/off with the light bulb button on the toolbar.

The two arrows in the upper right are for advancing or going back a chapter at a time.

The company just released 4.7 from the Apple App store with a few really nice improvements.

Text to Speech

The first addition of note is the Text to Speech capability using one of five optional voice add-ons. The voices can be purchased either in the app or through MantisBible.com for only 1.99. I tested them out reading from 1 Peter.

Of the five voices, I liked the Ryan voice the most. It is an adult mail voice and is clear and easy to listen to. If you prefer a female voice you can choose Heather or Laura. The Heather voice was my personal favorite. Two of the voices are children’s voices and they are not as good, but your kids might prefer them. The Kenny voice actually sounded a little more like a girl to me.

You first must install the voices from the library menu by tapping the book name in the top left corner. Tap the Media tab and scroll down to see the voice names. Purchase them by tapping and the next screen will give you the option. If you purchased them online, you will have to tap the Check for updates in bright red at the top of the screen to have them in your list of available content. They take a little while to download, so be patient.

While in a reading window, tap on the Tools button in the top right to reveal the toolbar. The button directly next to the larger white Options button is a sound icon. It reveals the reading toolbar at the bottom (pictured below). From there you will see the toolbar at the bottom of the text with the close button to turn off the voice, a long slider, the voice chooser button in white and the play button to the right. Tap the white box to choose among the installed voices. Hit the play button and it will start reading to you.

I am not sure what the slider is used to adjust. It thought it was for the speed of the voice or the volume, but it seems to do nothing right now. Also you cannot switch voices on the fly; you must first pause the voice and then tap the voice selection box. Not sure if this is by design or a bug. I wish it would automatically stop the voice and take me to the screen where I can choose another voice.

While choosing the voice you can adjust the volume and speed of the voice (see the above screen shots – the lower left screen shot shows the voice selector with volume and speed sliders).

This will be a nice feature while driving or exercising. You can do your devotional “reading” while on the go. Aside from the minor annoyances, it works great!

Verse Memorization Module

There are verse memorization apps in the Apple App store, but it makes so much sense to have one in your Bible app. When reading your devotions or listening to someone teach on a verse you can quickly add the verse to the memorization module and come back later to learn it.

You access the module from the menu that appears when you press and hold the verse number. For example, if you want to add Romans 3:23 to the memorization list, top and hold the 23 in Romans 3:23 and the menu will appear. If you have used Mantis for awhile you will recognize this as the way to access the inline translation chooser, commentary chooser, and other functions like adding notes or highlights. The inline study Bible as they like to call it is one of the greatest plusses of MantisBible. Now there is a Memorize button with a heart over the word.

After adding the verse by tapping the Memorize button, you access your list of verses by going to your notes. At the top you will see folders. If you have no other folders of notes it will be the only one there. Otherwise find the Memorize folder. Tap on the verse you added and the Memorization module screen appears. From there you can work on memorizing the verse. Hit the Question mark button to learn about how to use the module as it is not obvious, but once you are told it is quite useful and easy to work with.

The way to memorize is by repetition. You read and re-read the verse over and over. You then start tapping words to remove them from the verse (see right below). After awhile the entire verse is gone but you are saying it from memory.

At the bottom of the screen you see [RESET VERSE], which you tap so you can see the original verse. When you think you know it, tap the test  button at the upper left (see above pictures). There are two test styles. With the Scrambled button selected, when you tap the Test button it puts all the words of the verse in the bottom half of the test screen all scrambled in the wrong order (see left below). Tap the words in the proper order to show that you have it memorized. The alternative test type lets you type out the words. When the 1st Letter button is selected prior to tapping the Test button, a keyboard is placed in the bottom of the screen (see right below). Start typing the first few letters of a word to make it appear above to test your memorization.

Advanced Search

The final new feature in this release is the Advanced Search function. I won’t go into a lot of detail here. But from the MantisBIble.com forum, here is what they developer is saying about it.

New Search Screen (allows you to search across all installed volumes at the same time, select specific books of the Bible to filter the search, and allows you to view the entire verse for each "hit" and drill-down to strongs numbers, etc., all in the search screen.)

The search feature is much improved and will give you more control over finding content.

MantisBible just keeps getting better. The text to speech and memorization modules are very nice additions. As per my custom of rating using the App Store model, I give Mantis a definite five star rating. After reading some of the reviews about stability issue in the App store reviews, I was surprised. I think that one caveat iPhone software users should consider is that if an app is buggy or crashing ask yourself two things.

1. Have I reset my iPhone since upgrading? That usually fixes problems I have had with a cantankerous app.

2. Have I been updating for so long that it might be time to do a fresh install. The iPhone OS keeps all your preferences when you simply upgrade. After a few point releases it is a good idea to delete the app and reinstall from scratch either from the App store or by syncing with iTunes on your desktop.

I have had no issues with buggy behavior with v. 4.7. Nor has it crashed once. YMMV!

Accordance 8.4.5

Bible Analyzer 3.9.2

Glo 1.4.0

Logos 4.0b

The Word 3.1.2

Check it out at Dave’s Blog over at the rabble.rule blog.

1. When searching in certain ways it was not as fast as they claimed
2. Moving between tabs was very slow
3. Scrolling was not smooth – and still is not as smooth as it should be
4. Typing notes at first seemed fast but if you type more than about 6-8 words it would slow down so far that you could not use the notes feature.

But now that I am using the 2nd beta of Logos 4.0a (available here) and it is much faster in most of those situations.  Here is a screen shot of a basic search for the phrase “two walk together”.

The reason I used that phrase to test it was that some in the Logos forums were noticing that this search took as much as 6 seconds to perform. But mine as you can see is less than a quarter of a second.

Moving between tabs and scrolling is much faster. Now it is not instant as it is in Logos 3, but they are taking steps in the right direction.

Sadly, the notes problem is still there. So, hopefully that will be fixed soon. And another annoyance I have is the black title bar as seen below:

Notice there are no icons for minimize, maximize, or close in the upper right corner.  Here is how it should look:

The first screen grab is taken when the window is maximized. It looks like this almost all the time. I say almost because once I saw it display correctly in a maximized state. But the window looks normal when it is open but not to full screen maximization.