One of the more popular Bible Reader apps on the iPhone was YourVersion’s Bible. They updated it for the iPad to take advantage of the new device’s features.

 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.

If you have been following the tech news this Easter weekend you’d think that Jesus resurrection was the second most important event celebrated today. Personally, I had a ball in church proclaiming “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!” I told my wife as I was exiting the sanctuary that I felt like a kid coming off the roller coaster. “Can we go again!”

After going home and taking a holy nap to recover from the busy weekend of worship prep, I am starting a week of vacation and excited about both preaching and the iPad.

For the last week the various Digital Bible study outlets have been prepping for the iPad launch. Sadly, only a few of them made it over the finish line. But never fear because the race is not over. Some are taking the slow and steady pace approach and others the get there and get it done approach. One of those latter, sadly fell victim to the App store approval process and so wasn’t ready despite great efforts.

The ones that are available are getting in on the excitement. Logos is shining the brightest in my opinion. It is atop the store when you search for Bible and has some really good reviews. YouVersion is very popular and gets a lot of downloads from people who are not looking for a serious Bible study tool. BibleXpress is making a name for themselves, but also has the the most expensive price in the currently available apps for the iPad. HandiBible is there too with the most instances – they have the basic app, a version in Romanian, German, and The Message. holiwrit (yes it is supposed to be lowercase h) is a newcomer going after the crowd who only want a simple Bible reader. Coming soon are OliveTree, PocketBible and MantisBible.

I am excited about the future of Bible study on the iPad. The things that are net yet out may be some of the most creative and use the space most effectively. So be looking for them soon. Until then, it is a little sparce.

One sad note! I did a search for Bible in the Apple iBook app and found very little. You can get the KJV, NIV, and NRSV, but none of the other most popular translations like ESV, HCSB or NLT are there. I hope this changes. On the Kindle side publishers have had a large collection of Bibles for a long time and this helps Bible students who want to read on their iPad. There are also some commentaries and reference works available in iBooks and Kindle. I found the Expositor’s Bible Commentary in iBooks.

With Gizmodo reporting over 1,000 apps in the iPhone app store devoted to the Bible, it could be hard to figure out which one is best. I did an in depth review of Bible apps in Christian Computing Magazine before I joined the Notebooks.com team. In that review I found that the three best were Laridian PocketBible, Olive Tree Bible Reader, and Mantis Bible.

As with most iPhone apps, the development cycle is swift so some of what I reported is already out of date. A new app released since that review is from Logos Bible Software and deserves a spot on the list. The most popular is YouVersion, but it does not have all the features and study tools available in the other four. All four of these are free to try. All except for YouVersion have very advanced tools for studying the Bible as well as ways of helping you set up reading plans.

Currently I am using Logos for daily reading, OliveTree for taking notes when I am in worship, and I use Mantis and PocketBible when I want to use the books I have purchased for those apps that are not available on the other two.

Speed is everything. Well, not always. In fact I don’t really think that how fast a Bible app opens on the iPhone or iPod Touch is that big a factor in judging the quality of a Bible app so long as it opens in a decent amount of time (less than 6-10 seconds) and does actually open. However, with the recent upgrade of OliveTree, the speed at which the app opens has become a bragging point. OliveTree says they cut the time it takes to open the app in half. So I got curious and tested my four favorites (Laridian PocketBible, Logos, MantisBible and OliveTree)  plus YouVersion since it is so popular. Just a note, the only reason I don’t count YouVersion as one of my favorites is that it really is only a Bible reading app. There are no commentaries or other recourses in it. Just so you can try it out, what I did was open each app cold – which is to say that I had not opened it previously. Apps will open faster if they were open before since the iPhone OS leaves some programs in memory. So to ensure this, I actually rebooted my iPhone by pressing and holding the power button on the top and the home botton just below the screen. It gives you a red slider and you slide it into position and the phone shuts down.  Press and hold the power button on the top of the device to start it back up after about a minute. Then I made sure that it was fully started and began by first opening the each Bible app first cold (never opened before) and then I closed it by pressing the home button and reopened it.  I timed just counting 1-1,000, 2-1,000. I know it is not that scientific but its good enough for this kind of test.

Here are my results.

PocketBible opened up to HCSB cold in 7 seconds. It reopened in less than 3 seconds.

OliveTree opened up to ESV cold in 4 seconds. It reopened in less than 2 seconds.

Logos opened to the Home screen (cannot open directly to a Bible) in less than 5 seconds. There was no difference when reopening. This is probably due to the fact that it must contact the Logos server.  I was testing using Wi-Fi.

MantisBible opened to the ESV cold in just under 5seconds.  It reopened in just over 3 seconds.

YouVersion opened to NET cold in 4 seconds. It reopened in 5 seconds. I downloaded the translation so that I’d be opening an offline version.

My conclusion is that while OliveTree is one of the fastest, it is not so much faster that it should be a factor in app quality. In fact, unless I notice a program taking a very long time to open, I would never even mention this in future reviews of Bible apps for the iPhone. Finally, since Logos has to contact the Logos server except when you have your phone in airplane mode, it will take longer if you have a slower connection. Most of the time Wi-Fi will be the fastests with 3G next followed by Edge. Sometimes when I am on Edge, Logos’ app is very slow to open. The iPhone OS gives an app 30 seconds to open. If it fails to open in that amount of time, then it will kill the app making it look like it is crashing. Sadly, on Edge this as caused problems when opening Logos’ app. It MantisBible used to have this problem, but they fixed it. I’ve never had this problem with OliveTree or PocketBible. And YouVersion will always need an Internet connection to be used effectively.

Social networking and Bible study should go together. The iPad may help us in this venture.  I read about some interesting key points (thanks to Gizmodo) that Apple wants developers to keep in mind as they prep iPhone and Touch apps for the iPad coming sometime in the next two months. One of the points said:

They’re super into the sharing thing: "Think of ways people might want to use your application with others. Expand your thinking to include both the physical sharing of a single device and the virtual sharing of data."

As I read that I thought again about the thing I am most excited about when it comes to using the new iPad – Bible study.  How could developers of Bible study apps incorporate more “sharing” so that we could take advantage of the “application with others”? Already there is some social network built into a few of my favorite Bible apps on iPhone/Touch. YouVersion is probably the best at this with their community based app that can be used by people together in church or together commenting and sharing about the app. My problem is I don’t like the YouVersion’s selection of content or the interface. I also really don’t like only being able to use it online, although you can now download a number of Bibles. While it may be the most downloaded app, it is not more favorite and I don’t have it installed.

Of my favorite Bible apps, Logos can post to Facebook and Twitter from within the app. You can also email verses from within Logos. But there is no two way interaction. Olive Tree syncs notes with Evernote, so I guess there could be some do it yourself interaction there.  Neither Laridian PocketBible nor MantisBible have any social interaction at all.

Imagine, if someone would really jump on this with some really useful social interactivity. I could imagine a Bible app that …

• Let’s people share reading plans by marking them to be shared between devices and posted to social networking sights
• Highlighting and other mark-up that is shared in real time. A pastor or Bible study leader wants everyone to look at the word “perish” in John 3:16 so in social networking mode, everyone’s Bible app would sync to the same place (John 3:16) and the word “perish” would be highlighted. Then a note he had already added the word would pop up on everyone’s device with the same content saying “perish means to destroy yourself. God is not responsible for our perishing; we are.” I could then tap a spot in the pop up to save it to my mark-ups or just let it go away once the social networking session is finished.
• What if I had a book on my device that I wanted others to see while we are studying together – like TWOT as we look up an Old Testament Hebrew word. They might have access to TWOT, but for this session they can see it temporarily during the study. There would also be a link somewhere on the other person’s screen giving him/her the opportunity to purchase this book either now or later. This would be a good way to legally share content either temporarily or permanently and would give a revenue stream to the software maker.
• Like YouVersion, it would be nice to have a “wall” where we could post comments or sermon notes so that anyone searching that version could access the public content. There could also be a collaborative way to create content together from within the program that is later searchable.

These are just a few ideas. What would you like to see in this kind of app. I know that some of the Bible app producers read this sight so you can speak to them via this post and comments.

Dave Dunkin, a developer of the Logos iPhone app, created a very nice and very fair comparison chart of all the major iPhone Bible apps. The reason this is significant is that he is extremely honest and fair when judging his own app. He don’t just glow about the Logos app. The extensive chart compares Logos, BibleReader from OliveTree, PocketBible from Laridian, YouVersion, Paul Avery Bible and Mantis.

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