The best 7 education and reading iPhone apps of all time by Karissa Bell

Whether it's learning a new language, catching up on our reading lists or exploring the night sky, iPhone apps have been helping us learn about the world around us from the earliest days of the App Store.

See also: The 9 best productivity apps for iPhone of all time

This list is a look at the best educational apps ever made for the iPhone, based on our list of the 100 best iPhone apps of all time. As with the rest of the apps on the list, we evaluated education and reading apps based on their design, cultural impact and how they resonated with users. The apps below are ranked in the order in which they appeared on the best 100 list.

For a closer look at how we chose and ranked the apps on our list, you can read more about our methodology here.

• 7. Feedly

  

  Long before Google killed its RSS reader, Feedly was one of the few apps making unwieldy RSS feeds look good on a smartphone. The app not only proved RSS feeds don’t have to be ugly, it offered more features — like better sharing tools — than many of its counterparts.
  
  Later, when Google killed Reader in 2013, the service became more essential than ever, adding more than half a million new users in the span of 48 hours as panicked Reader devotees flocked to the app. Feedly not only helped us save our precious RSS feeds, it has continued to add new features that help news junkies stay on top of their reading lists.

  Image: Feedly

• 6. Instapaper

  

  Instapaper is, in Internet years, a fairly old-school app. The app originated as a simple bookmarklet for web browsers in 2007 before making the jump to the App Store the following year. The app quickly became a favorite for many thanks to its simple interface and ability to enable offline reading. The $10 premium version of the app, which added extra features like hands-free scrolling, was also among the first truly successful paid apps. (The app is now free to use with extra features available via a subscription.) Instapaper has faced fierce competition in recent years from the likes of Pocket and even Safari itself, but the app remains one of the best tools to tackle your reading list.

  Image: Instapaper

• 5. Duolingo

  

  While no app can make learning a new language completely effortless, Duolingo’s gamified approach manages to keep it engaging. The app guides you through vocabulary, reading, writing and speaking lessons that don't feel like homework. Best of all, the app is completely free. There are no ads, in-app purchases or spammy gimmicks that many of its competitors employ. Though it began with only a few languages, the app has now expanded to more than a dozen languages. Admittedly, its offerings could be more diverse — it mostly offers European languages — but, fresh off new funding that values the startup at almost half a billion dollars, there are likely a lot more lessons in the works.

  Image: Duolingo

• 4. Pocket

  

  Pocket, like Instapaper, has become one of the most popular apps for saving news articles, videos and photos for later reading and viewing. It's especially useful for revisiting content when a Wi-Fi or cellular connection isn't available, like in a subway tunnel or in the bush. Originally called Read It Later, the app (and service) accrued a legion user base of 4.5 million users. However, the app really shot into the stratosphere when it was rebranded as Pocket in 2012, and the $3 price dropped to free. Today, Pocket is integrated with over 1,500 apps and has more than 17 million registered users. Though the app is free, there's a premium upgrade ($5/mo. or $45/yr.) that offers more powerful features such as a permanent library (in case content disappears from the web), deep search and suggested tagging.

  Image: Read it Later

• 3. Kindle

  

  One of the smartest moves Amazon ever made was to create an app that let your read your digital books on any device or platform you wanted. Of course, the company took its time getting there, first introducing apps for Windows and Android. Finally, in 2009, Kindle for iPhone arrived. E Ink readers like the original Kindle (and current Paperwhite) may be the perfect device for hours and hours of reading, but we’re not always carrying them, so the Kindle app, with its instant access to all your digital books was the perfect anecdote. The app offers all the features of a Kindle reader and some more, like the ability to display color images and graphics. Not everything you have in your Kindle Account is accessible, though; many magazine subscriptions don't appear. Still, it’s a minor quibble for an app that is well-designed and probably ranks as one of the most important and ubiquitous in the app ecosystem.

  Image: Amazon

• 2. Star Walk

  

  Star Walk ($2.99) arrived in 2010 and gave astronomy neophytes a crash course next-level stargazing. The app uses the iPhone’s GPS, compass and gyroscope, so when you hold it up to the night sky, you see on screen a perfectly positioned overlay with information on the brightly shining bodies in view. The image will change in real time as you move around, and you can tap on any celestial body to get more details. It's quite simply the stargazer’s dream app and has spawned many imitators, some of which are also quite good. But Star Walk will always be the first and, perhaps, the best.

  Image: Vito Technology Inc

• 1. Google Translate

  

  Google Translate on the web is a familiar and vital tool for many. But if you aren’t using the iPhone app, you’re missing out. The app is hands-down the best tool to look up a word or get a real-time translation on the go (we’ll never get tired of speaking into the app in one language and having words repeated in another.) But the app’s neatest trick is one it learned from Word Lens: point the camera at text — whether it’s on a piece of paper or on a street sign — and the app magically transforms words written in Japanese kanji into English. Of course, your mileage will vary depending on the level of support for the language in question, but, for now, no other translation app compares.

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