I recently made the jump and decided to buy an iPhone. I won’t go into details about the months I spent pondering the decision but I’ll start this story with my experience using the phone.

I am thoroughly amazed, subhanallah, at how sophisticated Apple’s iPhone is through the vast functionality that is built into the phone and the endless functionality that can be added to the phone using add-on applications available through Apple’s App Store.

After browsing the application store and buying applications (all free applications so far) I have come to the conclusion that my iPhone could very well stand for the “Islam Phone”. With the iPhone I have the following at my fingerprints:
- Prayer Times for anywhere I am
- Compass application providing the direction for prayer (qibla)
- Daily Hadith
- Full Quran in Arabic, with a translations in many languages and with audio files that help with recitation
- Zakat calculator
- Hundreds of Islamic lectures by reknowned scholars
- Nasheed

Alhamdulillah. I am a consultant and having the above functionality available to me no matter which state I am in, no matter which office I am in, and no matter where I am trying to find a convenient place to pray is VERY powerful. The following is a list of applications that help me obtain the above functionality. I’m sure there are more applications out there but even what I have right now is truly impressive.

iQuran - this application provides the full Quran, with English translation and audio recitation that follow the displayed verses.

iPray - this application allows you to set your city and then provides the prayer times for your city, the qibla direction and dates of important islamic events for the current year.

iZakat - a very functional Zakat calculator

alQuran - similar to the iQuran application, this application also has the whole Quran, with translation and audio recitation but also provides translations in many other languages besides English such as Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, and even some less expected languages like Japanese and Pushto! (Click here to find out how to change the translation that is being used with this application).

DailyHadith - provides one Hadith per day and saves the hadith within the application so that you can refer to it again later.

Compass - this is a standard application on the iPhone that leverages a built-in magnetometer provided by the newest version of the iPhone (iPhone 3GS). The Compass appears to be relatively accurate in providing the direction of salat (qibla). In combination with the iPray application (which gives you the degrees away from north that the qibla is), this is a wonderful tool that can help one in finding the right direction to face for salat.

Zabihah - Very powerful application that will take your current location (via the iPhone’s GPS and location based functionality) and will give you all mosques, halal (zabihah) restaurants, and halal markets within a specified distance from you (i.e. 1 mile, 5 miles, 10 miles, 20 miles or 50 miles). Also able to plot those locations on a map and provide you with contact numbers, addresses, ratings and reviews of the restaurant, and directions. This application is an extension of the zabihah.com’s large database of halal serving restaurants and other islamic locations. This is one of my favorite applications even though I had to pay $2.99. It was well worth its price (unlike many other applications that can be found on the app store, but that’s a separate discussion).

If you have come across other useful Islamic applications for the iPhone, please share in the comments section and it may possibly get added to the above list. JazakAllah khair!