Wolfram Alpha is a search engine that needs no introduction. It is a great resource for any researcher, student, financial analyst, or anybody who wants to learn a little every day. It is a massive complilation of tons of different pieces of data that are easily accesable from a plethora of different commands. Now the Wolfram Alpha team has finally brought the search engine to the iPhone and iPod Touch… for a price of $50.  Is Wolfram Alpha worth the $50? Is it even worth any money, considering you can just access it from the browser?

When you first start up Wolfram Alpha, you are greeted by this somewhat intimidating screen. Not only do you have the normal keys, but you’ve also got the number set of keys to make entering inputs easier. When you get to this screen, you may be confused as to what to enter. If you have no idea what to do when you get here, then why did you buy this app? (Especially when it’s $50). Let’s say that you had $50 that was burning a whole in your pocket and you needed to spend it, so you bought this. Then you would click the little book in the top left corner, which opens up the Examples screen. Ta-daa!

The Examples screen is great for Wolfram Alpha newbies or people who just want to get familiar with the language of Wolfram Alpha. It’s got tons of, well, examples for you to learn, ranging from Statistics and Odds to Music. This is a great feature that the web version of Wolfram Alpha just doesn’t have. Another thing the app version of Wolfram Alpha does much better than the web version is graphs and charts.

They look and function beautifully inside the app, making you feel like it really was worth it. The app also boast a great UI that feels Apple-esque and buttons to expand data. It’s even got a “Share” button, with choices like “Share with Twitter” (which only opens Safari and goes to twitter.com to post it, sadly) and “Share with Mail.”

Overall, it is a joy to use Wolfram Alpha. The UI is spectacular, it’s stable, and does exactly what it says it does. Although I can’t justify the $50, I will definetly say that it is much better than the browser version. You can tell that the Wolfram Alpha team put a lot of time and effort into the app. In all likelihood, you’re never going to need Wolfram Alpha. But when you do, I sure as hell would like the Wolfram Alpha app by my side! Wolfram Alpha is a great app that is perfect for what it does, but the price of $50 really holds it back, earning it a solid 4/5. It would have a 5/5, but you just can’t give a $50 app a 5/5 unless the app can make your iPhone come to life and do work for you. For those of you that want to oogle so more, I’ve included a lot more screenshots at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!