All of Wikipedia Available Offline on iPhone/iPad at a Price!

AllofWiki Offline Rating: ★★★☆☆

Information is power and in this fast paced society fast access to that information is equally important. The online ‘bible’ of information at the moment is Wikipedia, but the trouble with Wikipedia is you have to have access to the internet to use it and as we know there are occasions where there is no coverage for our iPhones or iPod Touch’s. Well this is where AllofWiki Offline aims to step in.

AllofWiki Offline does exactly what it says in the title, it downloads all the content of Wikipedia to your iPhone, iPad,  iPod Touch for you to browse at your leisure whether you have 3G/Wifi or not. The biggest flaw in this plan is the size of the download which at present is over 5GB. Now I don’t know about you but balancing the amount of music, apps, video’s and photo’s on my device is a constant juggling act and so finding 5GB of free space to download all the content was not going to be easy. That being said for the purpose of this review I clear enough space and then left my device for a couple of hours while it downloaded.

Once the data has downloaded the interface is easy enough to use especially on the iPad where the larger screen is put to good use allowing you to search and navigate the pages easily as well as bookmark pages for easy access. The only things missing from this version of Wikipedia are the pictures.

AllofWiki OfflineThe search is fast too which is what I would expect considering that all the data is now stored locally. The app is not updated on an incremental basis, instead you will be prompted as and when new full downloads are available.

The 1st download after your initial download is free and then subsequent downloads are charged at $1. These downloads will be made available within a week of them being made available by Wikipedia which usually occurs monthly.

While the functionality and speed of the app is very good I have to question the point of it. Surely if you want the content of Wikipedia at your finger tips you’ll have an iPhone with a data plan and surely there can’t be many places left in the US that don’t have some form of network access.

If you’ve got the space to spare, I for one know that I don’t, and you want all of Wikipedia at your finger tips then this is the app for you although at $9.99 and $1 updates it’s not cheap.

The Good

  • 1 App for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad
  • The complete Wikipedia offline
  • Fast search and bookmarking

The Not So Good

  • Who has 5GB of space on there iDevice with Music, Apps and Videos?
  • Initial download time is huge

Price: $9.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Updated: Apr 15, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.1
Size: 3.0 MB
Language: English
Seller: Brilliant(ish) Software
© Brilliant(ish) Software 2009
Rated 12+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

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One Comment on ““All of Wikipedia Available Offline on iPhone/iPad at a Price!”

  1. Ulf Larsen

    If this is not cheap, well then the person that wrote it is. This is almost free and you get a whole encyclopaedia for around 10 US dollars! And if one does not want to pay, the original is waiting for you for free as soon as you get on the Internet. What is wrong with people these days?

    Ulf Larsen
    Voluntary contributor, Wikipedia/Wikimedia

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