Back in 2006, Laridian released PocketBible 3.0 (PB3), a much anticipated update to their popular Bible software for the Pocket PC. Just two years later, they have released PocketBible 4 (PB4), which builds on the features of PB3. Features introduced in PB3 included the ability to highlight, view more than 2 windows at a time, integration of DailyReader and more. PB4 takes those features and more to the next level, improving the user experience for casual and power users alike. It is far more friendly to one handed use, leveraging user interface changes Microsoft has added in Windows Mobile 5 and 6.
I've had the pleasure of playing with an early version of PB4 as well as participate in the beta process. Be forewarned that all of these images were taken with a late beta version, so what you see below might differ slightly with the released version. That said, visually, you won't notice immediately big difference between PB3 and PB4. You can see the image on the right looks very similar to PB3 on a WM5/6 device, which means long time PocketBible users will have no trouble upgrading and immediately using the features they've come to love over the years.
Once you start reading though, you'll immediately notice some differences. In PB3, when you turned pages, meaning going up or down a screen, the screen would just change to the new text. PB4 now scrolls the screen, letting your eyes follow the new text on the screen so you don't have to consciously shift back to the top of the screen to keep reading. If you've ever watched the screen change on an iPhone, you'll recognize this visual animation. When it does this, PB4 displays "Working..." in the status bar, if you have that displayed. This is the bar that normally shows the name and location of the active book. Your first thought at watching this happen might be "well, that is cool, but it seems to be taking a long time to do this scroll, and I'd like to turn it off to make it go faster." I tested this page turning against PB3 on some other devices I have and didn't really notice any difference when the devices were side by side. PB4 on my HTC TyTN II turned at about the same pace as did PB3 on my HTC Universal and HTC Wizard, winning as many page turning contests and it lost. I'd like to see more responsiveness in PocketBible when you turn the page because sometimes it can be a second or more before the turn happens, but it isn't the animation causing the issue. I suspect there are a large number of variables like device speed, the speed of the memory card, the size of the book, etc. It would be nice if PocketBible could cache the previous 3 and next 3 screens so the responsiveness would be as fast as it is with other book programs like eReader and MobiPocket, but I also recognize flipping pages that only have text versus flipping pages that have text, highlights, footnotes, hyperlinks and more is a bit different.
PB3 introduced the ability to have a large number of books open, compared with just two books at a time in the older PB2 application. The problem was, the more you opened, the less lines each window had. You can see this below in this older PB3 screenshot.
Figure 1: PocketBible 3 with 6 windows open.
PB4 still allows you to open up as many windows as you like, but now lets you maximize the window you want to see and allows you to easily flip between open windows. In Figure 2, you can see that I am in Maximized view, which becomes available when you have 2 or more books open. You can also close the active window if you are done with it, or close all other open windows if you are done with them.
Figure 2: The Maximize option
Figure 3: Switching between books
In Figure 3, you can see I have 2 open books, the Holman Christian Standard Bible and the One Year With Jesus devotional. I can easily flip between open views by just wiping my finger across the screen, also known as using gestures. You have to think of the open books or windows as a deck of cards. if you wipe from left to right, the book on the bottom comes top the top. If you wipe from right to left, the book on top goes to the bottom and the second book in the stack comes up. Of course if you just have 2 books open, it doesn't matter which way you wipe. I have gotten in the habit of just swiping the screen with my thumb, which prevents spilling coffee held by my other hand. If you prefer using a stylus, that works just as well.
The only issue I have found with the Maximized view is you can't add a duplicate window to the mix. For instance, let's say you wanted to compare the genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 in the same version. In normal view (not maximized), you just go to the Add Book screen and tap on your existing translation and you will have two copies of it on the screen. You can them maximize one and flip back and forth, but if you are already in Maximized view, you'll have to switch back to normal view, add the duplicate, then switch back into Maximized view.
Something you may have noticed in the screenshots above are some new icons in the toolbar. This is one of the new features of PB4 that you should have some fun with - customizable toolbars. There are so many features and options in PocketBible it was a bit frustrating to have some toolbar icons you never used taking up screen real estate while being unable to add some of your favorite features to the toolbar. There are over 50 toolbar buttons you can add now across up to 3 toolbars, so just about everyone should be able to customize the buttons to fit their needs. All of these images are with a QVGA (320x240) device, but VGA users will be happy to note that there are real VGA buttons included. For those that feel the buttons are too small to tap with their finger, they can increase the size of them, although that cuts in half the number of buttons you can have on the screen. See Figure 4 for a comparison of large and small buttons.
Figure 4: Regular sized and large buttons, satisfying fat fingers everywhere.
Figure 5: Available Toolbars and Customization Screen
In figure 5 above you can see that from the left View menu on
a WM5/6 device, select Options and you can enable or disable the three toolbars.
The main toolbar is what you normally have on the screen. The Reading toolbar
includes the Daily Reading functions, allowing you to go to today's reading,
check off a day when done, etc. The Auto-Scroll tool bar is... well, I'll get to
that in a minute. 
What is
nice about the toolbars is the title of the toolbar is largely meaningless as
you can replace all the buttons with whatever you want, so you could put reading
functions on the main toolbar if desired. To make switching a bit easier, you
can put toolbar-changing buttons on the toolbar. If you go back up to figure 3,
you can see the far right toolbar icons are a series of red dots with a green
triangle. Those allow you to switch back and forth between toolbars without them
stacking up on the screen, taking away from your text area.
Ok, I might at well talk about the auto-scroll feature. Personally, this isn't a feature I care for too much. I've tried using it in various ebook readers before and again in PB4 but I just don't read at the same speed on each page. I tend go back and re-read a line or a few lines if I am not sure I got the meaning of what I just read. However, I know this is a much loved feature by many in ebook readers and you'll be happy with the way PB4 implements it.
Figure 6: Auto-scroll settings
You can see above in figure 6 the auto-scroll toolbar. When auto-scroll is enabled. you can increase and decrease the speed of the scroll with the + and - toolbar icons. The status bar will tell you what speed it is set at, speed 7 in the image above. I am not sure how much value I can add on reviewing this feature. I found speed 10 to be reasonable for me, thought it was too slow on poetic verses that don't take up the whole screen. I could still read it at 35, but I know I am not comprehending it very well at that speed. I did notice some pauses at that speed so those graduates of the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading courses might find the pauses frustrating. Again, your device, RAM, processing power and storage location will impact this in various ways. I think I'll stick to reading the way Jesus did, by moving His eyes down the screen.
Another feature that power users with large libraries will love is the ability to look at a verse in all installed translations or commentaries at once.
Figure 7: View In All feature
In PB3, if you wanted to see a verse in various translations, you could tap-and-hold on a verse, select Sync To Verse, then open up some other translations and see what they have. PB4 still allows this, but it goes one better. You can now tell it to "View in All Bibles" or "View in All Commentaries." PB4 will begin scanning your library - the more books you have, the longer it takes, but even with over 20 translations installed, the scan tool only between 5 and 7 seconds. You'll then be shown a window that shows that verse in all translations and a hyperlink to take you to that translation if desired. View in All Commentaries works the same way, except it will only show you the first few sentences as some commentaries have paragraphs and paragraphs on some verses. You can also highlight a word on the screen and select "Lookup in All Dictionaries" and get the definition in all installed dictionaries.
Figure 8: New Ok/Cancel button placement
One of the issues with PB3 that made it hard not to use a stylus was the placement of the Ok and Cancel buttons. PB4 has moved them down to the soft keys of a Windows Mobile 5 and 6 device, making it easier to navigate. I believe all locations with Ok/Cancel, like the Goto screen in Figure 8, the Add/Change book screen and even the options screen now use the soft keys. There are other nice features like the ability to save and restore preferred layouts if you have different screen layout preferences for reading versus studying, etc. The Find feature has also been beefed up a bit including a "NEAR" search term, allowing you to find two words within so many versus of each other. For example, if the Near setting is at 3, searching for Moses NEAR Aaron will yield 409 results. This new search parameter can be combined with the existing AND, OR, XOR and NOT to make some pretty complex searches. The NEAR term only works in bibles, not other books.
PB4 is a welcome upgrade to PB3, once again convincing me that the Pocket PC is an ideal platform for many of your Bible reading and study needs. All of your existing books from PB3 will work in PB4 without having to redownload them. At the time of this review, upgrade pricing hasn't been announced for previous users. You can discuss this review at Pocket PC Thoughts. You can buy PocketBible from Laridian, and be sure to check out my Laridian PocketBible page which has my comments on individual books and translations I have installed..