Review: eReader
Score:
85%
Ewan snuggles up in his favourite chair by the Christmas tree, with a selection of novels on his smartphone, courtesy of the brand new eReader application (and ecosystem). Apart from the use of a restrictive ebook format, there's very little to complain about, it seems, and Ewan has no problem recommending that you give the free app a try.
Version Reviewed: 4.0.0fp
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So the festive period is almost over (apart from Scotland, our holiday is actually Hogmanay, Christmas is just a limbering up exercise) and tradition dictates that you either drag yourself back to work for all of two days, or you settle into a very big, very comfy sofa, with that good book you got under the tree.
Although I'm now in the former group, I'm settled into my big comfy office chair and looking at eReader on the Nokia 5800 – an ebook reader tailored to the 5th Edition devices.
Open eReader after installation and two things spring out – the first is that it asks for an internet connection, and the second is that two novels are listed already. The latter is a good idea, because it means those new to ebooks can get straight in and see what it's like to read your favourite novels on a digital device.
The popping online happens when you've set books to download in the background. One of eReader's strengths over some other book reading apps is that it has a full store online for purchasing books. The problem of where to get books is now mostly answered, mostly down to eReader being part of the Barnes and Noble chain. This provides a traditional bricks and mortar backing to eReader, although do note that it's rather American.
It's worth noting that there is no built-in store in the application. Although there is a menu option, this simply opens up your web browser at the relevant page, which is a solution that's great in a cross platform enviroment, but one that feels a little bit of a kludge when you look at the rise of on-device app stores elsewhere.
That aside, the modern blockbusters are there, including the inexplicably popular Dan Brown, and the more pulp-ish modern techno-thriller authors like Dale 'no relation' Brown (who I much prefer). Your account is in your name, not per device, so you can browse on the web browser on your phone or the desktop, make your purchase and have it appear in your "Online Bookshelf", available to be downloaded to eReader (hence the app asking to go online as it starts, if you have this feature enabled in the settings).
There's little question that, if your goal is to pick up modern writing with little hassle, then the eReader eco-system is a good choice. Once you have purchased a book online, it sits in your online book-shelf, and you can browse this from your smartphone and download as required. Of course you need to consider if you want to make a large investment in digital literature, but that decision is beyond this review – I would think that most people would be happy with making two or three purchases to see how they get on.
For those of you looking to read your own books, either from an existing collection or one that you have made up yourself, eReader is rather restrictive in the formats it uses. Actually, it only uses one other, the .DOC format (which, confusingly (a) is not the same as the MS-Word 'doc' format and (b) can be wrapped up in .doc, .pdb or .prc extensions), and you need to make sure that the books are placed in a specific directory on your phone's memory card. Not surprisingly, this is different to other eBook applications, although it's likely that most users will, after a short period looking at the options, choose just one app for their long term reading.
The application itself is certainly above average, but there's a lot of room for improvement. The overriding thought I have after reading a few books on my 5800 is that eReader can feel sluggish when navigating the menus and UI; there are a few areas where work needs doing in the menus to make sure that everything fits in with your phone's selected theme; and a little more differentiation needs to be made between models.
I suspect part of this is down to the coding of eReader. As it is available for pretty much every mobile platform, there is likely to be a large portion of code that is used in every OS, and an emulation-like layer on top to convert for a specific machine. That makes for less work for the development team, but also means some loss of performance on the smartphone.
It also means that some features that you would expect on a specific platform might not be there. One of the biggest missing features for me on eReader was the volume buttons – I was expecting these to scroll through the pages of the book. Alas, on my 5800, the only option was to use the touch screen – although in the settings you can decide if a tap is enough to turn a page or if you need to actually flick the page over with a sweep of the stylus or your finger.
I have to commend eReader for the sheer flexibility of laying out the text on a page. You have control over font size used, the pagination and alignment of the text, the size of the margins, even the graphical style of the paper used behind the text can be altered. And you don't even need to keep jumping back to your text as there is a preview mode to make sure the tweaks you've performed have the results you want.
Apart from the button issue, eReader makes it comfortable to read books from your small screen. While I've never been a fan of the 'autoscrolling' option that many people love in electronic books, it's implemented well here. I mostly don't enjoy it because I prefer scrolling page by page rather than line by line.
While eReader has some flaws, none of them are show stoppers; and the service behind the application makes the eReader system one I would recommend to those starting out on eBooks. I'd like to see some improvements in the next version of the application, but as it stands this is a stable eBook reader with enough customisation that should let most readers sort out a comfortable reading experience.
-- Ewan Spence, Dec 2009.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at