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Readin’ on the Droid: Author Gwen Hayes reviews Aldikio, WordPlayer, eReader and Shortcovers
November 22, 2009 | 10:27 am
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By David Rothman
Psst! Tip for Motorola: Give the world not just the Droid smartphone but also an iPod Touch equivalent without the iPhone-type stuff. Keep the price low and aim for apps such as e-reading—just one example.
Such thoughts come to mind in the wake of a review that author Gwen Hayes did for Dear Author on four Android e-readers that work with the Droid and do ePub: Aldikio, WordPlayer, eReader Pro and Shortcovers. It’s clear the Droid and other Android machines are very much on the minds of e-book app developers now, even if e-books fans are just a small part of the total Android-related market.
Surely other nontelephone apps—such as games—are of interest to Droid buyers who don’t need the phone capabilities.
Meanwhile, what did the Hayes review conclude? Comparing Aldikio and WordPlayer, she says that “for my DRM free books, between the two, I much preferred Aldiko. It was faster, and better organized to me, allowing me to tag books the way that makes sense to me.” She disliked the “robot voice” in WordPlayer; but any voice, as far as I’m concerned, would be better than none.
For DRMed books, she notes the existence of the new eRear Pro version for the Droid and other Android machines, but says complains the app didn’t recognize her taps.
About Shortcovers, Gwen says it uses the same Adobe DRM system that Sony Readers do—a negative in one sense, since she says Adobe can be so much fuss. But she likes the ShortCovers’ catalogue integration.
Those are just some details. Check out the full review.
Reminder: This is just round one of Android software, and it will be interesting to see how the existing programs evolve, including FBReeaderJ.
Disclosure/reminder: Tiffany Wong, Aldikio’s marketing director, is a much-appreciated contributor to TeleRead who follows the Chinese e-book scene. Meanwhile I find that the WordPlayer guys are almost neighbors with me, working over in near-by Fairfax county.
Related: Co-editor Paul Biba’s post about app limits in the Android OS. Let’s hope Google addresses this issue. I think it will.
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Comments:
It’s not “Wordplayer Art of War”, it’s simply an app called Wordplayer that comes with the sample book [i]Art of War[/i].
Thanks, Rimon. We went by the Android Market headline, which was out of date or wrong to begin with. Fixed. TeleRead encourages community member to alert us about even small errors. Appreciated. – David
Thanks for the link up. I’ve been using the eReader app the most. I’m starting to enjoy reading on phone more than I thought.
Appreciated the update, Gwen. Keep both Dear Author and us posted on your progress with your new baby and the accompanying software! Why are you using eReader the most? Because you haven’t any choice but to use it to read DRMed books? Or for other reasons? Not surprised by your use of the phone. Many people feel the same way, although I can also understand those who stick to E Ink tablets. It’s a rather individual thing.
Thanks,
David
Well, eReader is the only ebook app on android with off-line dictionary support. The Shortcovers app also has DRM support (or, at least, is a proprietary format only used by shortcovers to prevent copying).
I just downloaded eReader for my Motorola Droid and it won’t link to the M-W 11th Collegiate Dictionary (or Thesaurus) so I can look up words while reading an eBook, and it won’t search for words I type into either dictionary or thesaurus.
Any help on fixing this problem would be appreciated!