Accessing online information on a smartphone is a dominating process these days and it effectively brings a world of information into the palm of your hand whenever you require it. However, it is not always as convenient as we would wish for and dependencies such as network coverage and speed play a part alongside the quality of the mobile browser you are using.

WikiPock takes the issues above out of the equation by bringing over 3 million Wikipedia articles to the device itself. You will need a big expansion card to cope with the data (over 4GB for the English version), but once it is loaded this is a smart way to have all of this data with you all of the time.

Once you have purchased the app you have to install the app on your smartphone and then download the data from the developer’s website which will take some time. I have a very fast Broadband connection and it took over 3 hours from start to finish, but at least this is a one off process which you do not need to repeat. The next step is to move the data to your expansion card which unusually you can put it anywhere on the card.

Now the fun bit- open up the very basic looking app and start typing. A list of results will pop up and you can then choose which one you want to read. The entire process is very quick and compares very well to a standard 3G connection. You will not get images because the size of the database would be prohibitive if they were included. However, clicking ‘Go to web definition’ in the menu will take you straight to the online Wikipedia version of the article.

I noticed that clicking hyperlinks in articles results in a small delay of a couple of seconds, but again the comparison to online viewing is impressive. The articles themselves are well presented and only look a little strange if there are a lot of hyperlinks included at the top of the article. Formatting is included such as italics, bullet points and bold and as a source of information WikiPock works very well indeed.

There are two purchasing options for WikiPock with one including updates for the next 12 months and I would suggest you go for this one. I went for the basic version and am already pondering an upgrade so that the information available is as relevant as possible. One other feature I should mention is the Random Page option which when clicked will obviously present a page from the database- I played around with this the other night and an hour later I had to stop because I was just wandering around picking up snippets of information I never knew before.

It is available for Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile, in 18 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Catalan, Turkish, Finnish and Czech) and even pre-loaded onto an SD card direct from www.wikipock.com.

WikiPock is an excellent solution for bringing a massive amount of information onto your smartphone which is easily accessible whenever you need it. It is the kind of application you will re-visit time and time again and has proved invaluable and a source of fascination to me over the past few days. I like the idea of having over 3 million articles stored directly on my phone and not having to rely on a mobile internet connection. Maybe it is sentimentality, but it works for me and is extremely good value.

You can purchase WikiPock from the following links- Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile.