Ever since I posted my blog post of “Five Free iPhone Apps for Seventh-Day Adventists”, I got a significant number of visitors to this blog from search engines. Though I don’t want to make a quick conclusion, it somehow means that there are a lot of SDA who are curious about what kind of apps related to the church are available in the iTunes store.

In this blog post I’m going to review three more SDA apps that are specifically related with the information media.

1. SpiritRenew

by: SimpleUpdates

Last week I received a blog comment from Rich DuBose regarding the SpiritRenew app that he mentioned is produced by the Pacific Union Conference. So I immediately downloaded the app and see what is it about.

The app basically contains Christian articles and stories that covers a lot of topics from career to the women’s world. It is interesting to note that the website version is called AnswersForMe.

One major drawback of the app is, it cannot run offline. It seems that the app doesn’ download the articles and thus it requires internet connection to run it.

2. Spectrum

by: Association of Adventist Forum

Spectrum is the iPhone app for the Spectrum magazine. If you’re not familiar with the magazine, it worth to check their website here.

So what’s good about the app? It’s just a simple app to read the blog posts and articles in the west from the iPhone, nothing really fancy. However it downloaded these articles whenever we access them for the first time, so we still can read these articles offline.

The bad sides? Some of the app features are not working yet (the Cafe Hispano and SS Lesson) and it seems that the app is really at an early stage of development, hopefully we’ll see some updates in the future.

3. iRecord

by: Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SPD) Limited

iRecord is the iPhone app of the Record magazine, the official news magazine of the SDA in the South Pacific Division.

This application looks a bit more sophisticated that the previous two apps. It enables us to read the blog, watch videos, and read the latest issue of the magazine.

The good? It also downloads the articles to the iPhone so it doesn’t require constant internet connection to run. It’s also more colorful and interesting to see compared to the SpiritRenew and Spectrum.

The bad? For a reason that I cannot understand, the picture of each articles takes almost half of the the screen and it stays there when we scroll down the article, as if the screen size is not small enough.

Another thing is, the magazine issue is not optimized to be read in a mobile device. I notice some loading time overtime I scroll to read the magazine. The problem that is caused by the large size of the magazine PDF file (~7.1 MB).

Conclusion

I’m really happy to see there are more SDA appestat have been developed for iPhone and Android. I hope we will see a lot more interesting apps in the future.

All of these apps are all free and they are worth to have if you have iPhone or iPod touch. Have a great time playing around with these apps and God bless!

If you own an iPhone or iPod touch, there are some apps you may want to have in your device. Although not all of these apps are created by SDA, but three of them are. It sort of surprise me because this time the church seems to adopt the hype of mobile application quickly. These apps also get updated quite often so far (and I hope they always will).

I only put three apps of the church that I used most, although there are more apps avaiable in the iTunes store.

1. Bible

by: LifeChurch.tv

I believe this app (or other version of it) is a must for everyone who profess that they are Seventh Day Adventist. There are a handful number of Bible apps in the iTunes store, but I believe this one by YouVersion is the best of all.

It has a lot of downloadable versions and low light mode that I like very much.

2. Sabbath School

by: Sabbath School and Personal Ministries Department

There was a time when I need to download the SS lesson in PDF and open it using a Document viewer app of my iPod touch. Thanks to this Sabbath School app from the SS Dept, I don’t need to do the hassle anymore. I only need to download the lessons every quarter from the app so I can view them offline.

It has all the links to all Sabbath School Study Guides, from Beginner, Primary, to the Adult class. Very nice!

3. EGW Writings

by: Ellen G White Estate, Inc.

What if you can carry the whole Ellen G White writings library around? With the EGW Writings app, you can. It makes everyone’s access to the priceless writings of EGW even easier. I should admit I never finish many of her book other than ‘Education’ and ‘Steps to Christ’ (because those two were required reading in my two college subjects). However, this app makes her writing easily accessible to me anytime, and made me more realize how good her writings are.

It comes with a KJV Bible included. I believe this app can be a favorite app of pastors and evangelist who like to quote the inspired writings.

4. Beliefs

by: Hye Multimedia Ministries LLC

Whenever some people ask you what are the doctrines SDA believes in, you can open this app and read everyting about the 28 SDA fundamental beliefs to them. It is not the full version of the book we all know, but rather a brief description of each doctrine and Bible verses that support it. It is very handy and simple app that can refresh our faith anytime we need it.

5. Sunrise Sunset

by: Brett Cato

Whenever you’re not sure what time the Sabbath starts? Just set your location in this app and it will show you the sunset in where you are at that particular date. It is not 100% accurate but it really get close to it.

The app is really useful if you are living in a place where the sunset time can change quite dramatically due to the seasonal change or daylight savings time.

Wrap-up

As more and more people get mobile device, we will see more and more mobile apps. Other than iPhone, the next big name in mobile device now is Android, and I believe some of these apps have their Android version available as well. I’m happy that the church sees the opportunity of spreading the Bible through this media.

If you know other apps that can be useful for the Christian life, please let me know and write on the comments below.

Finally, after the last two ipods I reviewed, I can own one myself. Yes friends, I own an iPod Touch now, and I loveeee it so much!!! After I spent almost the whole day yesterday filling up the iPod touch with applications from iTunes store, I decided that I should do something useful, such as writing this review.

So here it is, my review of the iPod Touch 2nd generation:

Sound

Now, this may surprise most of you who never heard the sound quality of iPod touch before. But I’ve got to say that iPod Nano (and probably iPod classic too..) has better sound quality compared to iPod touch.

How come??? From a quick google, I read in some forums that iPod Touch has different sound chip, thus different sound quality.

How bad is it? Well, it’s probably just okay, but not special. It’s still clear and loud enough to please most people’s ears. However if you are an audiophile you will notice something missing, such as deep bass and crystal quality sounds.

Its internal speaker is also no different, it even sounds like a can actually, nothing to be proud of.

Display

3.5″ never looked so good. Trust me, when it comes to display quality, it is comparable to other iPods. Though technically the iPod touch has less pixels in an inch compared to iPod nano, thus iPod nano may have a sharper display.
But I don’t have any complain about the iPod touch display, it’s just sweet.

Applications

Out of the box, you will be a bit surprised.

“$229 and I only got browsers, calendars, and calculators????”

Well, iPod touch is more like a computer than other digital gadgets in which where everything is already installed. So, just as computers too, you got to install applications to fully use the iPod touch capability. Now this is where the iPod touch and iPhone are literally unbeatable, I repeat, unbeatable.

With more than thousands of applications, and still growing everyday, the apps are what make an iPod touch is a versatile digital gadgets. From the useful business applications, productivity tools, and ebook readers, until some applications that makes you wonder how people can become so creative such as flashlight and, yes, bug repellent.

Buy or not?

If you can’t resist the temptation of this little cool gadget, do what a friend of mine did when I showed her my iPod touch, don’t try it. Cause once you feel the gadget, the bright and shiny display, and unbelievably interesting applications, it’s really hard to not wanting it.

The price is not that high, considering you got a PDA and even more, so I believe it’s a good buy when you have the money.

Although as a music player it’s still fall short compared to the other iPods, the user experience of using iPod touch pays off the price. But once again, if your primary purpose is to find great sound quality, you may want to find other music player.

For me, the actual competitors of iPod touch is not other MP3 players, because simply nothing can beats this cool music player.
The competitor of iPod touch is rather it’s close brother, the iPhone.

With all the iPod touch can do plus telephone capability and 3G support, iPhone is really something delightful in this life.

So, that’s all I can say about iPod touch 2nd generation for this time. I’m going to continue playing around with it.

See you in the next review guys!

After exactly three years since my last review of my brother’s first generation of iPod nano, I finally able to get my hands wet on the third (am I right?) generation of this cool gadget.

Once again, the iPod nano that I tested here is not mine, it’s owned by my work colleague and it’s just freshly arrived last evening. Yummy..

Sound

Hey, however cool this gadget looks it’s still a music player (or MP3 player, though strictly speaking it should not be called MP3 player since it also able to play other music formats and videos) so it should be measured on how good the sound it produce.

Using the white earphone the ipod comes with, the sound is clear and crisp enough. Not really special, but it definitely pass the first test.

But it would be unfair if I don’t test the gadget with two of my favorite cans, the Sennheiser PX 100 and dbE Acoustics PR20.

Sennheiser PX 100 Test Result — WOW!!! This ipod is really something. It produces detail sounds clearly. Bass kicks is also very nice and never covered other sounds. I should give it 9.5/10 for the sound.

dbE Acoustics PR20 Test Result — Marvelous! The isolation add some more details of the song. Sweeet…! I felt like I don’t wanna take it off me forever (unfortunately the ipod isn’t mine.. :p).

Display and Interface

Next, it’s all about what I see…

Apple is always well known for the beautiful graphics that are pleasing to the eye of everyone, and this ipod is no exception.

The interface is still very similar with the previous nano though I see more pictures everywhere right now.

Good graphics is also supported by its sharp 2″ inch screen with 302×204 pixels resolution. Don’t worry when it comes to what you’ll see, Apple never let anyone disappointed.

Physical Form

It’s still as thin as before (if not thinner) with only 6.2 mm depth.

Though this is one thing that makes nano a ‘nano’, its sleek aluminum enclosure is somehow too smooth and makes it quite slippery whatever the way you try to hold it.

Buy or Not?

I admit I’m not yet convinced to buy an ipod, not till now….

The 8GB I tried is tagged at $139 and the 16GB is tagged at $189. The price is reasonable enough though you definitely can find a lot cheaper music player out there. But hey, it’s an Apple, they shouldn’t really come cheap right?

If my faithful Apacer MP3 player I bought in 2005 got broken, I would really consider of buying this iPod nano.

iPod MP3 player has been a very interesting international buzz for several years. So much so until some people generally call MP3 player as “iPod”. I remember exactly two years ago when I just bought an Apacer MP3 player to record a one-day seminar. There was this guy who asked me, “Wow, cool iPod you have there? What brand is it?”. I said, “WHAT !? you just said it was an iPod and then you asked what brand is it?” (No, I didn’t said it in front of him actually…)

There were several reasons why I didn’t buy iPod when I decided to have an MP3 player:

1. Price. No discussion about this, I simply didn’t have enough money.
2. Features. I needed an MP3 player that has microphone to record sounds and line-in jack that can record input from other devices. None of these two features were offered by iPod back then, and even until now as far as I know.
3. Battery type. For me it was one very important part to consider before buying electronics. I hate propietary batteries, cause it means when I need a spare battery, I should buy it ONLY from them, and with their own price as well. The Apacer MP3 player that I bought uses one AAA battery, simple enough to find it in convenience stores anywhere.

So those were the reasons why I didn’t buy iPod back then, although I was very interested on what actually made iPod such an international icon of MP3.

The iPod that I got now is a gift from my sister for my brother. But since he is still in Bandung until next week, I have the “right” to test drive it first. Sorry bro! Hehehe! ;D

Allright, let’s go straight to the review.

Sound

The sound is sure marvelous! It has 22 preset equalizers that are significantly different and can give the great sound settings for any of your music type. It doesn’t have manual equalizer capability though. The standard earphone that comes with it does its job well. It is not the best earphone out there, but it surely good enough to give sound that is pleasing to your ear. However for some of you who demand more sound, like me, I suggest you to spare some money for better earphone or headphone brands such as Philips or Sennheiser.
For the sound I give it the score of 8.5. The preset equalizers are really really good at their job, you should really try them out and choose appropriate presets depending on your music type. Unfortunately I actually expect manual equalizer from this lil’ machine, since I’ve paid quite sum of money for it (oops, actually my sister did…) so I really expect something more.

Features

What can I say? Honestly, I’m really confused with this gadget. I mean… it was supposed to be an MP3 player and deals only with sounds. But it also have calendars, photo gallery, games, clocks, contacts, notes, and stopwatch. WHAT??? I just don’t get it, instead putting a microphone to record sounds or line in jack to record input from other device, it gives you contacts, and stopwatch. Well, I understand that sometimes this features would be useful. But I leave them to be taken care by cellphones or PDAs, not by an MP3 player…
I give score in range from 5 to 9 because it really depends on what kind of features you need from an MP3 player. It really cool actually for an MP3 player to have photo gallery, games, and contacts. Unfortunately, for me who doesn’t need any of the features, it’s a 5.

Price

It’s $150 in the U.S. and about the same price in Indonesia as well. It’s still the most expensive MP3 player out there as far as I know. There are so much cheaper MP3 player around with more or less the same features with iPod nano, but I haven’t seen any with the same very thin shape. If my eyes are still ok, it measures around 5mm thin. Now that’s thin! And I wonder how can the $150 become this

Design

Now, this is surely one unbeatable point of an iPod nano. It is way coooolll and sexy! And I believe by having one, you can certainly look cool and sexy like the iPod as well. Trust me, I’m not exaggerating things here and Apple didn’t pay me anything for saying this. Guys, if you want an easy reason for girls to get near you and have a topic to talk about, get an iPod (either buy it or borrow it..). Hahaha!
I give it total 9 in score because it is really beautifully designed. So much so until I think most of the people out there buy iPod for coolness and fashion sake.

Ease of use

I don’t know what others are saying about the ease of use of an iPod. But for me, it’s far from easy at first.
First, they don’t come with the iTunes CD anymore so you gotta download the it from the internet. Who needs iTunes anyway, I said. But you DO NEED iTunes before able to use the iPod. Without it you cannot do anything with the empty iPod. Unlike other MP3 player out there that can be used immediately by copying the music files directly to the device in Windows, you just can’t do that with an iPod.
Second, one very irritating thing is I can’t change the song volume while I’m browsing the options in iPod. To change the volume I must wait until the song menu that appear after left idle for a few seconds. I can’t wait several seconds if the volume is too loud and damaging my ears. My Apacer MP3 player have dedicated volume button so I can adjust the volume anytime.
I give it a score of 7 in terms of easiness of use. It’s not intuitive to use at first, although once used to it, I guess it’s just plain easy. I think it’s like using Apple computer for the first time. You must adjust a lot of things, but after that, it will run smoothly and predictable.

Conclusion

I should say that I love the iPod nano and get irritated with it at the same time. For me, I can compare it like having a beautiful and sexy girlfriend but sometimes hard to talk with… Get it? I mean the gadget is so beautiful and sexy, both the hardware and also the software. But sometimes it’s hard to understand why it’s kinda not so user friendly and the features are limited when it comes to handling sound. So, in the end, should you buy an iPod nano if you are looking for an MP3 player?

- If you want a very very cool and sexy MP3 player that can make you look the same, it’s a sure yes!
- If you need features, you may want to look for other MP3 player with more features.

But if you ask me if I still love the iPod nano? Yeah baby yeah…. and bring that sexy back!