This app for Android is intended to provide access to the ever popular Wikipedia for Android users, wherever they might happen to be. WikiDroid is a completely free app, and does a terrific job of achieving its goal of having Wikipedia’s power constantly available on Android phones. You get full access to all the content on Wikipedia, including graphics and live links, so accessing it from the app won’t mean having to make any sacrifices at all, as you’ll still have the full experience.

Basically, the app serves as a conduit to Wikipedia’s website. When you perform a search, WikiDroid will grab all the information that’s relevant and pertinent from Wikipedia, and format it in such a way that it’s attractively and appropriately displayed on the Android, and then it gets delivered to you on your phone. All of the content of Wikipedia is available; you aren’t restricted to only text-driven information, as graphics and live links aren’t ignored, but delivered to you in an appropriate format.

Every time you do a search, you will receive suggestions from WikiDroid for potential matches, and this means that your time spent on a search is noticeably shortened. You even have the option to perform voice searches. Every time the search option is tapped, you’ll see a little button with a graphic of a microphone appear alongside of the search box, just as when you use the Android to do a search on Google. It’s then just a matter of tapping the button, and speaking your desired search, and WikiDroid will do its thing. It functions just like using the regular search, as voice search makes use of exactly the same technology and engine.

There are more features, too – you have the ability to make bookmarks and even to share them with your friends, and you can request a random page. You also have a lot of the same Android tools that are using for browsing online – text can be selected and copied to your Android’s clipboard; you can share pages with your friends via email, as well as Facebook and other networking apps, bluetooth and text messages. You also have the option of using different languages, and the familiar functions of zooming in and out.

If you want to have the ability to save pages from Wikipedia onto your phone, in order to peruse them when offline, you have to have the WikiDroid Plus version, which will set you back 2 dollars.