Case study
Islamic Bundle: Building an Accurate Prayer Times, Adhan & Qibla App
Athan Time Pro — Quran & Qibla
Client
Personal project / founder
Role
Lead mobile engineer — iOS, Android, and prayer utilities
Timeline
Shipped on App Store & Google Play · maintained through updates into 2026
Platform
iOS & Android
Framework
Swift / SwiftUI (+ Android)
Category
Religious / Lifestyle Utility
5+1
Salah times + Qibla core
2 stores
App Store & Google Play
Offline
Tracker & times after setup
Product tour
Drag or swipe through the camera scan, result, care, disease, and pest flows.
In-app screens · iPhone
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App Store–ready flows — home countdown, prayer times, Qibla, live channels, Quran, and prayer tracker — cropped to the real UI for the case study tour.
Overview
There's a category of app where "close enough" isn't good enough. Prayer times fall firmly into that category — a Muslim opening the app to check when Maghrib starts needs the exact minute, not an approximation, because it directly affects when they eat, when they pray, and how they plan their day around five fixed points.
Islamic Bundle (Athan Time Pro) was built around that standard. It's a daily-use Islamic companion combining five-time Adhan notifications, accurate salah timings for the user's location, a Qibla compass, Quran audio, live Makkah/Madinah channels, and a personal prayer tracker — so practicing Muslims aren't forced to juggle three or four separate apps.
The problem
Prayer time apps are a crowded category, but that crowding hides a real quality gap. Accuracy, reliable Adhan alerts, and trustworthy Qibla readings are exactly where many apps fell short — and for users, those failures aren't minor bugs.
- Prayer times off by several minutes depending on calculation method, location precision, or timezone/DST handling
- Adhan notifications that fired late, failed in the background, or drained battery from aggressive location polling
- Qibla compass features that drifted indoors with no calibration guidance
- No simple private way to track personal prayer consistency over time
Getting Prayer Time Calculation Right
Harder than a single formula
Salah times depend on precise geolocation, the chosen calculation method (ISNA, MWL, Umm al-Qura, and others), and correct timezone / daylight-saving edge cases — not one hardcoded equation.
Configurable methods build trust
Communities expect different Maghrib conventions. Using an established astronomical calculation approach with selectable methods — validated against known reference cities before launch — made the app usable across regions instead of locking everyone into one default.
Pro tip: never hardcode one method
Regional and school-of-thought differences are real. Hardcoding a single calculation method is one of the fastest ways to lose trust in a prayer app.
Architecture & tech stack
Islamic Bundle centers on an on-device prayer engine: location (or a chosen city) plus a selected calculation method produce the day's Fajr–Isha schedule. A rolling window of local notifications is pre-scheduled so Adhan alerts fire reliably under iOS and Android background limits, instead of depending on a fragile always-on service. Qibla combines magnetometer readings with GPS bearing to Mecca and surfaces recalibration when interference is detected. Prayer tracker state and daily schedules remain usable offline once location and method are set.
| Category | Tools / tech |
|---|---|
| Mobile framework | Swift / SwiftUI on iOS, with an Android companion experience |
| Prayer calculation | Astronomical salah engine with multi-method support (ISNA, MWL, Umm al-Qura, and related conventions) |
| Location | Precise geolocation with manual city search fallback when users prefer not to share live GPS |
| Notifications | Pre-scheduled local Adhan notifications that remain reliable when backgrounded or after reboot |
| Qibla | Magnetometer + GPS bearing to Mecca, with calibration prompts on magnetic interference |
| Quran & media | Ayat audio, Rabbana section, and live Makkah/Madinah channel surfaces |
| Local storage | On-device prayer tracker history so accountability tools work offline |
| Distribution | Published on the App Store and Google Play |
Key features
Five-time prayer schedule
Accurate Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha for the user's location, with support for multiple recognized calculation methods.
Engineering challenges & solutions
Solution
Pre-scheduled a rolling window of local notifications in advance instead of relying on a background service to fire them in real time — so alerts stay reliable under each platform's background execution limits. A missed Adhan is a critical failure for this product, not a minor bug.
Results
- Shipped on the App Store and Google Play as Islamic Bundle: Athan Time Pro
- Dual-platform companion covering salah times, Adhan alerts, Qibla, Quran audio, live channels, and prayer tracking
- Configurable calculation methods so different communities can match local conventions
- Documented with a full screen tour: home, prayer times, Qibla, live channels, Quran, and prayer tracker
What I’d do differently
- I would expand per-city time validation against more mosque/reference datasets earlier in development.
- Notification scheduling still deserves continuous tuning as OS background rules evolve — especially for battery-efficient long windows.
- Seasonal Hijri and Ramadan/Sehri-Iftar surfaces deserve earlier product priority given how usage spikes around the sacred calendar.
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