At the 2009 GYC convention, I was introduced to a new application for the iPhone and iPod touch that features Ellen White’s writings, called PocketBible. Unlike the Conflict of the Ages app I reviewed some time ago, this one contains all of the books (or at least the major ones) written by Ellen White. I counted 119 books in all. This is obviously a major advance over the five books included with Conflict of the Ages.
The base app, PocketBible, is developed by a company called Laridian. This app is FREE. However, PocketBible is mainly just a shell for library modules that you download. Some of these are free or included, but others — such as the Ellen White writings — cost money. (Most of their libraries are Bible translations and such.)
You cannot, apparently, buy the Ellen White library from Laridian. I got mine directly from the White Estate booth at GYC. However, I could not find any information about the Ellen White library for this app on the Ellen White Estate website. They definitely carry the product, because I am using it now on my iPod touch. My guess is that you just need to contact them for information about how to buy a serial number. Once you register the serial number on the Laridian website, you then enter your customer identification in the PocketBible app, and the whole collection downloads automatically. It’s best to do this with a wifi connection, because it’s quite a large download.
Personally I found the interface a little confusing. It’s not as elegant as the Conflict of the Ages app, but it’s functional. Personally I found the method of turning pages awkward. But some people might prefer it. It’s mainly a matter of taste.
The app is fully searchable. However, it only searches one library at a time. In some ways this is good, because you usually don’t want a search to be pulling words from all the different Bibles and commentaries. However, when I first started using the app, it appeared that you could only search White’s writings book by book. In other words, you might open Sons and Daughters of God and search that. Obviously that would be very limiting. However, I learned that the key is to open the library called “EGW-BKS” (in the Other Books section of the app), and searching in this library searches all the books simultaneously.
Here is a screen shot showing a search results listing:
And this shot shows what the content looks like. Note that the Bible verse references are clickable, which is quite cool:
If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, it’s definitely the best thing out there for accessing Ellen White’s writings.
Thanks for your review of PocketBible and the Ellen G White collection of books. I thought I’d clarify a couple of things for your readers.
First, PocketBible is a stand-alone product that we created for Bible study. We’ve been doing Bible study software for mobile devices for over 10 years now and have hundreds of Bibles and Bible reference books available for PocketBible at our Web site, http://www.laridian.com.
One of our products is called BookBuilder and allows an individual or a publisher to create and distribute electronic titles that are compatible with PocketBible. The EG White Estate used this tool to create this collection of books, which they distribute independently of us.
Second, the reason there might be a little weirdness when using this collection with PocketBible is that the person who created the books felt it was necessary to do a couple things: First is to put a large collection of books all inside of one book to make it easier to manage the entire collection at once. So rather than 119 little books you have one big one.
Also he wanted to retain the page numbers of the original printed books. We don’t provide a way to do this, so he tagged the book as if it was a dictionary. When you enter an abbreviation and page number, like “LDE 195″ in the “Look Up” field (normally used for looking up words in a dictionary), it takes you to page 195 in the book “Last Day Events”. Obviously if someone were writing an app dedicated to White’s writings, they would make this functionality work a little more elegantly, but the White Estate was trying to work with existing Bible study software to minimize their cost.
PocketBible for iPhone is an evolving app, so new features are being added all the time. One of the features on the to-do list is the ability to search your entire library at one time. Of course since the app is free and is distributed on the App Store, when new functions like this are implemented they are downloaded automatically to your iPhone or iPod touch at no cost.
Thanks again for the nice review.
Craig Rairdin
President
Laridian, Inc.
Thanks for the feedback, Craig. I look forward to seeing how this app develops!
I would like to know if you guys happen to have an app for the android phones…I have a Motorola Droid and have tried searching for it but can’t find a thing. Please let me know at your earliest convenience. Thank you
Migisha,
Nothing at present. We don’t talk about what we may or may not be working on, but if/when we do something for Android we’ll announce it first on our blog at http://blog.laridian.com. You could subscribe to the blog to make sure you find out.
Craig
Hello,
Where might I be able to find the free version as well as the paid version?
When there is an upgrade on both of the products is there a charge?
Blessings,
Tara Marie
Hi Tara Marie,
Currently these are the options available (search for “Ellen White” in the iTunes App Store to find most of them):
“EGW Free”- Free (17 books + Bible)
“Pocket Bible FREE” – Free (comes with no EGW content, you have to buy a key from EGW Estate, I don’t know the cost or if they are still doing this; when you get the key, it will install 119 EGW books)
“Conflict of the Ages” – 99¢ (Conflict series of 5 books + Bible)
“Steps to Christ” – $1.99
“Steps to Christ” – 99¢
“Desire of Ages” – $1.99
“The Great Controversy” – $3.99
So there are 7 apps with EGW material; they come from six separate developers. Two of the three best ones seem to be stuck in non-development at the moment.
Thanks for telling us about this, Michael. How much did the EGW books cost? And (more importantly) how much room did they take??
Thanks!
Laurel
Laurel,
I got a “special deal” on my app, so I don’t really know how much it costs. Sorry!
As far as room, the app itself takes a measly 5MB, but then the app downloads the EGW data, and there is not a clear way to tell how much data a particular app uses. If I had been more on the ball, I could have done a before and after test, but it’s too late for that. However, I can see that the amount of space for “Other” on my iPod touch (which is presumably the amount of application data, but I don’t know for sure) is about 325 MB. So I’d say the EGW data takes up some amount of space less than that. I have many apps installed, so it’s hard to estimate or guess.
EGW-7A 1.3MB (SDA Bible Commentary Vol 7a – EG White Comments)
EGW-AG 590KB (God’s Amazing Grace)
EGW-BIO 3.8MB (Ellen G. White 6 Vol. Biography)
EGW-BKS 46MB (Ellen G. White Writings eBook Collection)
EGW-BLJ 640KB (To Be Like Jesus)
EGW-CC 590KB (Conflict and Courage)
EGW-CTr 670KB (Christ Triumphant)
EGW-FLB 582KB (The Faith I Live By)
EGW-HP 600KB (In Heavenly Places)
EGW-LHU 707KB (Lift Him Up)
EGW-Mar 600KB (Maranatha)
EGW-ML 530KB (My Life Today)
EGW-MOTL 1.4MB (Messenger of the Lord)
EGW-MR 9.7MB (Manuscript Releases)
EGW-OFC 590KB (Our Father Cares)
EGW-OHC 580KB (Our High Calling)
EGW-RC 710KB (Reflecting Christ)
EGW-SD 540KB (Sons and Daughters of God)
EGW-TDG 640KB (This Day With God)
EGW-TMK 570KB (That I May Know Him)
EGW-UL 690KB (The Upward Look)
EGW-YRP 580KB (Ye Shall Receive Power)
I’ve been using this app for a couple of months now, and I really love it! The guys at Laridian have done a wonderful job with it! One of my favorite parts of the app is where you can turn on Synchronization which allows you to look up a passage in the Bible (you could be following along in a sermon, or just in your own personal Bible Study) and then, if you have the right books open, you can compare other translations, see scholarly commentary, and even see EGW’s comments on that passage all at the flick of a finger. Amazing!
My only complaint at this point is that you currently can’t highlight or add notes to the EGW books. I hope to see this added soon, as I use notes and highlighting on the Bible all the time and would love to be able to do this with EGW’s writings as well.
The developers are active and so I have high hopes for this app as it continues to be improved. I recommend this app to all my iPhone/iTouch friends as the best Bible app out there for iPhone. Once you get used to the awkward navigation, you really can do so much!
Has anyone heard word from the White Estate as to when this will be publicly available? They are releasing a CD-ROM with iPhone, Palm, and Windows Mobile versions, I understand.
Incidentally, if you purchased to last Windows Mobile version and registered it online, you will be able to download the iPhone version from Laridian.
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I have Ellen White’s writings for Laridian Pocketbible on the iPhone, and the lookup function doesn’t work with some books, including Desire of Ages and Christ’s Object Lessons. If I put in COL 100, or any othe page number, it won’t find it. Same with Desire of Ages. It works for many books, like PP and MH, for instance. Can anyone else verify that this is a problem? To get to lookup, I click on the Menu button (right most button at bottom of screen) and choose “Lookup”.
Thanks,
Ralph
I’ve never used the Lookup function. I just found it, after you pointed it out, but it’s grayed out for me. I can’t seem to get it to work.
I’ve never had the “Lookup” function grayed out, and I’ve tried it on more than one iPhone. It works for most books I’ve tried, but not DA or COL.
Thanks for your info..but I’m hoping soon an app for the Droid will be out…let me know if you get any word on this.
Does anybody know when the White Estate will officially release this product (EGW writings for iPhone)? I don’t see any mention of it on their website.
Thanks,
Ralph
Ralph, if this is what you mean, it is available now: http://ax.itunes.apple.com/us/.....90551?mt=8
Thanks for the link. I’m really interested in the Pocket Bible version that has so many more books. I’m also interested in the Palm version, which was also expected to be out over a year ago. I already have access to the iPhone version because I purchased the 2008 Windows Mobile/Windows version, but I have friends with Palms that I want to get the Palm version for, and other friends with iPhones.
How do you get the full ellen white on iPhone?
Jason,
I was one of the guys at the 2009 GYC booth for the Ellen White Estate. The modules that are mentioned in this article seems to have been abandoned. Development of it has stopped. Instead, the Ellen White Estate is going to release an official app around christmas. Currently a sample of this app can be downloaded in the app store. It only has 17 books, and features are slim. this is intentional. The final app is expected to contain highlighting of passages, bookmarks, i’ve heard the word “notes” tossed around, obviously a kjv bible, and various other bells and whistles.
something should be announced officially before GYC i would hope. I personally am not 100% certain as I was just a helper at the booth. My uncle was the one sent by the White Estate to setup and man the booth at GYC. By his words, this laridian module referred to in this app was a “Beta” of what would be released later as something bigger and grander.
I can’t speak to the motives or future plans of the White Estate but there was nothing “beta” about the Laridian version. If anything, what you’re seeing is a result of the fact that the man who spearheaded the production of the Laridian EGW module passed away a while back so someone is probably re-thinking their long-range plan. We also passed up an opportunity to work more closely with them on a product and that may have driven them to do their own.
It’s a bit of a shame, since this tactic of individual publishers creating their own Bible software has been tried so many times over the last 20 years and in every case it has failed, some more spectacularly than others. (I remember, for example, one publisher whose software product missed its ship date, so they actually sent empty boxes to the stores with price tags on them. You’d buy the empty box and “someday soon” get the software. Yikes!)
We’ve had a very good relation ship with the White Estate over the years and have bent over backwards to add features and fix problems when needed to support their product. We have a lot of customers of PocketBible who have the Laridian EGW modules and they’ll continue to work, even on our new Android reader that we’re working on right now.
Craig
Craig,
Glad you mentioned an Android app, I just replaced my iPod Touch with an Android smartphone and was bummed when I couldn’t find any EGW apps in the app store since I was so used to referencing the EGW iPod app all the time. Any estimate about when the app might be ready for Android?
We haven’t announced any dates yet. What you’re likely to see is first a version of the app that gives you access to the Bible, then we’ll add the other reference books, then we’ll start rolling out features until we have a full-featured app.
Watch our blog (http://blog.laridian.com) for announcements.
i have an android application…do u have software for this…