A True Reader App Coming to Smartphone

[Eric Lin]

http://www.jenneth.info/archives/000275.html

The current selection of "e-book" readers available for the Smartphone are limited to ASCII text files. This basically limits your library to books in the public domain or personal documents. Clearly no good if you want to read the latest novel that everyone's talking about. Jenneth has some news that Mobipocket will be the first commercial ebook reader to come to the Smartphone. While we would have preferred the large selection from Microsoft Reader or Palm Reader (aka Peanut Press), this is a start.

"At the moment my eBook reader of choice is Mobipocket Reader, so I was glad to get confirmation from the developers that they'll be releasing a Smartphone version sometime next week. I have the Pro version installed on my Palm as well as my Pocket PC. Why is it my favourite? Good selection of commercial books available, books compatible with both of my PDAs (so I can have books loaded on both devices and read from either one), ClearType support, full screen support, ability to change font and background, ability to add hyperlinks, bookmarks, highlighting, annotations and even edit text .. Their DRM function is fairly straightforward, though only allows you to download commercial eBooks for two different platforms. This may present a problem when the Smartphone version comes out, as I'll have 3 different versions .. I also have the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford Paperback Thesaurus eBooks, so I can swiftly look up definitions of words I'm not familiar with. I really like the dictionary implementation of Mobipocket - just tap on the word and a pop-up will appear with the definition, as well as a "more" link if you want to see the entire definition in full-screen. "

[Eric Lin]

http://www.jenneth.info/archives/000275.html

The current selection of "e-book" readers available for the Smartphone are limited to ASCII text files. This basically limits your library to books in the public domain or personal documents. Clearly no good if you want to read the latest novel that everyone's talking about. Jenneth has some news that Mobipocket will be the first commercial ebook reader to come to the Smartphone. While we would have preferred the large selection from Microsoft Reader or Palm Reader (aka Peanut Press), this is a start.

"At the moment my eBook reader of choice is Mobipocket Reader, so I was glad to get confirmation from the developers that they'll be releasing a Smartphone version sometime next week. I have the Pro version installed on my Palm as well as my Pocket PC. Why is it my favourite? Good selection of commercial books available, books compatible with both of my PDAs (so I can have books loaded on both devices and read from either one), ClearType support, full screen support, ability to change font and background, ability to add hyperlinks, bookmarks, highlighting, annotations and even edit text .. Their DRM function is fairly straightforward, though only allows you to download commercial eBooks for two different platforms. This may present a problem when the Smartphone version comes out, as I'll have 3 different versions .. I also have the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford Paperback Thesaurus eBooks, so I can swiftly look up definitions of words I'm not familiar with. I really like the dictionary implementation of Mobipocket - just tap on the word and a pop-up will appear with the definition, as well as a "more" link if you want to see the entire definition in full-screen. "

[mcsouth]

:rock on dude!: All right!!!! A real e-book reader for the smartphone! I was starting to worry that all the ebooks that I had purchased in the last few years would be stuck on my PPC. Let's hope that Palm Reader (okay, and maybe even MS Reader...) make smartphone versions as well. I love having a short story to zip through while having lunch, waiting for the doctor, standing in line, etc. And since I always have my phone, it just makes sense to me to have access to those ebooks on my smartphone!

[popabawa]

YES! MobiPocket rules

I've moved almost entirely to eBooks since I ditched MS Reader in favour of MobiPocket on my iPaq and this is grrrrrreat news.

Now, if I could just sync my bookmarks between my Pocket PC & SmartPhone I'll be in reading heaven!

[TANKERx]

Yes! Mobpocket is the best and it's cross-platform so nobody feels locked in! I use it on my Nokia 9210 and 7650 and now I'll be able to use it on my SPV also!

I heard from Mobipocket about three weeks ago that they were going to release this, so hearing more confirmation has to be a good thing.

[spg]

Great! Nice to see a "real" e-book reader coming to the Smartphone platform. I've never used Mobipocket on anything, but looking at it right now it looks like a nice reader. Still, I use Microsoft Reader a whole lot... wonder when we can convince them to come out with a Smartphone version?

[Nikhil]

In the brief time I had my Nokia 3650, I used MobiPocket and absolutely loved it. I was able to convert MS Reader books (both encrypted and not-so) on the computer I had Reader activated using the LIT to HTML converter that you can find online. All the MS Reader free eBooks I downloaded were converted and worked flawlessly (TOCs, pictures-Candy and Me is loaded with those, etc.)..I was also able to convert my purchased LIT copy of The Da Vinci Code into MobiPocket format. Note, you cannot convert DRM-encrypted books on any computer but the one that is activated for the book.

MobiPocket on my SPV is going to be great.

[Ed Hansberry]

Gimmee Palm Reader for Smartphone any day of the week. :way to go:

[spg]

Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry

Gimmee Palm Reader for Smartphone any day of the week. :way to go:

Palm Reader is nice too... I could go for that. I've used Palm and Microsoft as my main readers in the past, just never used MobiPocket... although that may be changing soon.

[popabawa]

In case anyone missed it, Mobipocket for Smartphone has been released!

It's a very good implementation of it too, very close to the PDA version.

Double thumbs up!