Throw a mobile device with a 3.2" screen at 360 x 640 resolution at developers and its only natural that they come up with ebooks and ereaders for the device. Its been like 18 months since Kindle was first released in US market and the market for portable electronic readers has been gaining grounds ever since then. If you ask me, I will not bother shelling out upwards of USD 300 on ebook reader alone and would love to have an application which can bring ebook reader capabilities to my mobile phone. Fortunately for me, many developers have been working on this concept and I stumbled upon this amazing reader from Offscreen Technologies.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes need no introduction and its not surprising that an ebook of Holmes is made available on the electronic platform. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's of "A Scandal in Bohemia" can be downloaded on your Nokia 5800s from this link here. The sis file is just under 400 kb and installation is done in a bink of an eye. I wasn't able to take screenshots of this reader using Screensnap and hence am relying on demo video from the official website of Offscreen Technologies to illustrate me point. As can be seen from the video above, its very intuitive and easy to use. One can scroll down a page by just dragging it around like a piece of paper or tap the ends for faster scrolling. I could easily manage with finger touch browsing (as compared to stylus in the demo video) and found it very easy and simple to browse around the ebook.
The interface has a very iphone/Mac OS X like skin and there are only two buttons in the application: one for closing the application and the other displays information regarding the reader. Like it or not, its very effective for reading as most of the screen real estate is taken up by the text. What I like the best of this reader is its intuitiveness like when you hit the next button on reaching the bottom of a page you are taken to the top on next page and you can flip pages as you would with a paper book.
Pros
- Easy to use and intuitive interface
- Fully optimized for finger touch browsing
- Optimum font size for reading and browsing through the book
Cons
- Ebook features like finding a word, dictionary etc are absent
- One has to tap on the screen after it loads for the reader to start (It took me a while to realise this as I was just waiting for the application to load after the welcome screen)
- Works only in portrait mode
- Cannot add other books (as of now)
Verdict
This is a very basic ebook reader for Symbian 5th edition devices and it pales in comparison with ebook readers available for other mobile platforms (esp iPhone apps). Its no doubt a very well written application, simple and yet elegant. Special thanks to the developer team for making browsing through a book this easy on a mobile platform. I would love to see some value added features like finding a word, dictionary, auto scrolling, speech to text and option of downloading other books. Till then I will be more than happy to have this reader on my 5800.
PS: Have you already visited the HTC Touch Blog? Check this post about the Twikini beta - The twitter on windows mobile?
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I tried this a short while but didn’t even read the story to the end as the app drains the battery unacceptably fast.
You must have left your wi-fi ON or something for this app doesn’t drain the battery that fast.. I read the whole book and didn’t see my battery strength drop by even a single bar..
No, I did not leave my wi-fi on or something. I think it is the mostly white background that does it. As you yourself write in a later post: “One would have to use a a very bright/plane white wallpaper to be able to use 5800 as a torch but this will drain the battery at an alarming rate.”
[...] which are very much similar to the buttons found in Offscr Technologies ebook: A Scandal of Bohemia reviewed earlier on our blog. There is an additional play button when compared to the ebook. The play button [...]
How about a review of some of the ebook readers currently available for the 5800? Some of the ones I found were iSilo, ZX styles and TEQUILACAT. How do they compare? Can they be used with DRM ebooks (ie, encrypted ebooks)?
Hi guys I’m having a hard time with this ebook app. Most of the time doesn’t load and I can’t pass the first page.When I try to go to the second page the app shuts down.
Any help will be great.Thanks!