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Droid smartphone launch: Better for e-booking than the iPhone, especially as more apps show up?
November 7, 2009 | 8:02 am
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By David Rothman
The Motorola Droid smartphone is out now, complete with a keyboard and a 3.7-inch touch screen, which is slightly bigger than the iPhone’s 3.5 incher and has much better resolution.
Remember, Roger Sperberg is pretty excited about resolution in the new Android devices.
But how about e-book software for Android, the Droid’s OS? Art of War looks pretty promising from afar, based on features, and I intend to catch up with it in person. Anyone have some first-hand experiences to report with Art of War? Web site here. Going by the Android Market at least, this one appears to be the most popular e-book-reading app for Android-OS hardware.
Meanwhile I’m also curious what the Stanza guys are up to, and whether Amazon might port over Stanza, rather than the existing iPhone app, to display Kindle books on Android-OS machines. Probably not. But it sure would be fun if that happened. Just don’t take away ePub capabilities, please.
Detail: The Droid’s browser is said to be great with full pages.
Related: WordPlayer Art of War, top free app in the Android Market, can read ePub: Other apps discussed., plus a Techmeme roudup on the Verizon launch yesterday. Also see Engadget review, source of current photo (earlier one was of a different machine).
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Comments:
there are two really good ebook readers on the android market, Aldiko and Wordplayer
Android could easily become the default OS for readers, both mobile phones and eBook readers themselves (Alex). you can try this out today with the Android reader at Shortcovers: http://www.shortcovers.com/android for this and other Android phones. it’s beta, but “beta than nothing”. works well on free and top-10 type books available in the store. thx.
The application is WordPlayer – it comes with an ebook of “Art of War” pre-installed. The original WordPlayer post mentions several other Readers, including Aldiko and FBReaderJ.
What the Android lacks is a Reader supporting DRM. However, B&N is reportedly working on an eReader app.
David,
A minor comment, but I believe your picture is of the Motorola Cliq available trough Tmobile, not the Motorola Droid from Verizon.
Big thanks for the catch, Michael. I’ve changed the photo. David
I got the Droid when it came out Friday. I’ve been long due for a new phone after living overseas with the navy for almost my entire enlistment. Just back to the states, I was eager to get an Android phone. I was debating the Droid or the Cliq and decided to drop T-Mobile for the Droid. After just a few days of playing around with it I am definitely won over. The best thing I had overseas for a small pda-like device was my iPod Touch and even though I jailbroke it, I’ve really been hankering for something open source.
I just downloaded WordPlayer, so I don’t know how well it will handle all the mobi books I have on my Kindle (sans DRM, of course) but my first impression is that it isn’t as polished as Aldiko. I read some of Art of War on Aldiko and liked the experience. I like the wide range of options. I hope I come to like WordPlayer because it has a rather impressive listing of accepted formats and it works with Calibre. I’m simultaneously excited and concerned at how much time I’ll continue to waste playing around with this phone.
Congrats, Spider. Keep us posted about your Droid and WordPlayer. The more details, the better!
Thanks,
David