Editors' choice is Quran Majeed Lite and iQuran

This is our first of, Insha Allah, a series of reviews on travel applications and products. Ramadhan being only a day or two away, our first review is on a mobile Quran application. Quran being such an important aspect in this blessed month, hopefully these applications will help us keep busy with the recitation and listening to it even in our travels.

Our first review is of free Quran iPhone applications. We have looked at only those applications that provide the full text of the Qur'an. This narrowed down the applications to the following:

• alQuran from alMubine
• Quran Majeed Lite from Pakdata
• iQuran from Guidedways
• Al Mus'haf from i4islam
• myQuran - Indonesia from biminasoft

First of all, we pray that Allah Tha'ala rewards the above companies abundantly for all the effort that they have put to make these applications available for all of us.

We reviewed the applications for usability in the following two areas, from a travellers perspective:

• Ease of use purely for reciting the Quran. How close do they come to the convenience of a printed Mus'haf.
• Audio recitation features. We looked not just the ability to listen to a Sheik's recitation, but the features available for making it a useful learning and memorization tool.

Ease of use for recitation (Quran Reader)

Our Choice : Quran Majeed Lite. If you are looking for an application for just reading while travelling, this one is our choice.

One of the most interesting features of Quran Majeed Lite is its ability to auto-resize width of the text to fit to the screen after you use the pinch/zoom feature to set the font size that you are comfortable with.

An interesting feature only alQuran has is the "page up / down" feature. Very convienient when you want to do continous reading. All others, use the swipe up/down feature, which requires you to manually make sure that it stops scrolling at the next page for easier reading.

Alhamdulillah, now there are many options to take a Qur'an with you while travelling so that you can keep up with the daily recitation of it. Here are 6 + 1 ways of taking the Qur'an with you on a journey:

1. Most of us still prefer to take a good printed copy of the Qur'an with us. This is still probably the easiest on the eyes. There are many "travel Qur'an" options available now; with leather covers with zips etc. However, some travelers do not wish to take a printed Qur'an around for many reasons, for them there are plenty of other options now.
2. Most Hotels in Muslim countries will either have a Qur'an placed in the drawer of the room or you can get one on request. Some of us are not accustomed  to asking for a copy of the Qur'an from the Hotel, but we should do so, since most Hotels will be able to provide one on request.
3. If you are taking a laptop with you while travelling and you have internet access then you can visit many sites, which has a Qur'an in a form that is readable on a laptop. www.quranflash.com and www.tanzil.info are some of those sites that provide a user-friendly interface. Some of them (tanzil.info) also allow you to download so that you can even use without internet access.
4. More and more travelers are now resorting to having the Qur'an on their mobile phones. There are now Qur'an applications for almost any type of mobile phone. www.guidedways.com has a very good collection of them. Although they are very good for listening, they are not very easy on the eye for daily recitation. If you are an iPhone or a smart phone user, you may be able to get by. If you search for "Qur'an" on iTunes, you will find quite a few Qur'an apps for iPhones.
5. Purpose built digital Qur'an's. These are MP3 based digital devices, the size of the iPhone, purpose built for listening and reciting the Qur'an. Some of the most popular ones are built by Chinese and Korean (www.quranbook.com) companies! The latest ones resemble the iPod. They are still not easy on the eyes.
6. Tablets are probably the best. iPads, Tablets or the eBook readers, probably will be the ideal replacement for the printed Qur'an while traveling. There are now many Qur'an apps for iPads and other tablet devices. If own an iPad, you probably will not need to carry a printed Qur'an anymore!

SEE ALSO : 11+1 Tips to Safeguard your Salaath while Traveling

+1 The best of course is to carry all of the Qur'an or at least some parts of it in our hearts. But for those of us who are still struggling with the memorization, Alhamdulillah with such a variety of options we can now choose what suits us best.

Insha Allah in future articles we will do reviews of the mobile applications for travelers, such as Qur'an apps, prayer times apps etc. In the meantime, if you come across a great mobile application for the Halal conscious traveler, please send us a review of it.