eReader for Symbian S60 5th Edition Review

wp-image-12065" title="eReader for Symbian S60 5th Edition Review" src="http://www.n97i.info/sites/default/files/gms/2010/03/eReader-for-Symbian-S60-review-01-300x300.jpg" alt="eReader for Symbian S60 5th Edition Review" />we have often remarked how weird it is that there doesn’t seem to be a general-purpose ebook reader app for Symbian S60 5th Edition smartphones. This seems daft – all that lovely screen real estate is crying out for a public domain e-text to display. We have read books on screens as small as an Nokia N95 and having a bigger, touch-sensitive virtual page just makes sense. Fortunately, we now have a serious contender with the eReader for Symbian S60 5th Edition. Find out how we got on with our hands-on review…

eReader is the self-described ‘worlds largest eBook store’ and has had ereader apps available for several mobile platforms. They have just released a beta download of their app for Nokia touch handsets and we have given it a try.

After a brief splash screen the app drops you straight into your ‘library’ (you get two books free, see below). Tapping on a book will open it up and take you to the page you were reading before you last closed the app. Text is clear and easy to read, and extremely configurable. You can choose both the font and size of typeface and can also select diferent types of ‘paper’ from a list including parchment, papyrus, lined notepaper or just ‘plain’.

Navigation is configurable too. You can skip forward and back either by tapping the top or bottom of a page or (and this is the default) by ’swiping’ your finger across the page. The swipe gesture is a nice touch, but in truth the resistive touchscreen you get with most Nokia touch phones just isn’t up to it. Tapping, on the other hand, does work but can occasionally select words for look up in the built-in index contained in each PDB file. It’s swings and roundabout, but on the whole we preferred the tap.

You can add bookmarks to a book easily and there are quick navigation options to jump between bookmarks or to specific parts of teh text as well as a full index. You can also ask the text to autoscroll, which is nice, but does rely on you having a constant reading speed and not being distracted.

eReader is an app for reading PDB files (a format popularised on the Palm PDA) and ships with two free volumes – The Time Machine and Around The World In Eighty Days. You may be wondering how you go about getting more. eReader.com is happy to sell you some and has a huge library of titles. Some are free (mostly public domain or Creative Commons texts) but the majority are commercial titles, many from popular and best selling authors.

You can add your own ‘personal content’ providing you can source PDB files. Several free apps exist to turn TXT and PDF files into PDB but actually getting them on the phone is a little more troublesome. The app’s help page says you can stick them in a folder on your memory card but we couldn’t get the app to see anything we stored that way. The best way we found was to upload titles onto the eReader website and have the app sync them the next time we used it. This works, but is a pain if you need to load a book or document right before you leave your PC, as you will probably end up having to download the book over 3G.

If you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops to get your own books on your phone, or are happy with the selection from eReader.com (or similar PDB-friendly sites like Fictionwise) then you will probably love eReader for S60. We have some reservations about the user experience, but this is still probably your best bet for reading books on a touchscreen Nokia.

Details
Size: 2 MB
Price: Free
DOWNLOAD: eReader for Symbian S60 5th Edition

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