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Why the Kindle and Sony beat the iPhone for ‘immersive’ reading
November 24, 2008 | 12:42 pm
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By Paul Biba
Over the weekend I decided to put my Kindle aside for a while and do some reading on my iPhone. I chose to read with Fictionwise’s eReader because I have a ton of books in my Fictionwise bookshelf, including several I haven’t read yet. I also subscribe to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and a new issue arrived.
Here are a few things that I noticed about prolonged reading on my iPhone:
1. For some reason I don’t find it as "immersive" as reading on the Kindle. I suspect that the smaller screen allows for more peripheral vision which is perhaps more distracting than the Kindle, or Sony Reader, which have a bigger field of view and so cut out more of the distracting rest of the world.
2. I find the backlit screen to be much more tiring on my eyes than the Kindle or Sony. Because of this I switched eReader to have a black background with white text, and I find this more soothing. It is to be hoped that Fictionwise will allow other colors for use in the background. On my Palm TX I found that a pale yellow or blue background cut out the glare nicely.
3. I find the "thumb taps" that change pages to be very annoying and rather tiring on my hand. I can feel the strain in my thumb after a while. A simple button press, which is how you change pages on the Kindle or Sony, seems to be much more ergonomic, at least for me, as it requires much less in the way of motion. Of course, this is a limitation of the iPhone and not something Fictionwise could do anything about.
On the whole, I would say that the Sony or Kindle give me a much more pleasant reading experience, but the convenience of just carrying and iPhone, and the nice implementation of eReader by Fictionwise, have a some strong attractions.
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Comments:
The LCD screen doesn’t bother me as much as the frequency of page turns. I’m getting old enough that I prefer reading with a medium size font, and so I end up flipping pages quite often when reading on my iPhone compared to reading on my 505 or my notebook.
I agree wholeheartedly. The iPhone works decently as a e-book reader in limited doses, and the ereader app is superb, but it cannot compete with the Kindle or Sony machines when it comes to a fully immersive, undistracted reading experience.
I’m not sure I can relate to the difference between “thumb taps” on the Touch and “button presses” on the Kindle.
Bio-mechanically aren’t they the same motion?
Anyone tried the ebook collections for the Touch sold by Beam It Down?
Their shtick is that the pages scroll at a rate that varies according to the tilt of the Touch. I’ve tried it and find that to be more annoying than other mechanisms used to turn pages (though it is useful when trying to do a quick skim of some material). I’ve never really liked auto-scrolling in my browser so I’m not surprised I didn’t really like the tilt/scroll action.
Of course others might find the scrolling action to be quite useful.
My Touch is fine for short bouts of reading but for really hunkering down for a good read I much prefer my Kindle.
From my experience reading on my T3, I totally agree with Paul about the difference between touch and key presses. On that device, I have both options always available for page turning, and I almost always use the button (actually, the 5-way navigator) as I find using the touchscreen more tiring and less convenient. You’d think they were the same, but they aren’t. It seems counter-intuitive, as is often the case with ergonomics and usability issues. You cannot qualify these issues by doing “thought experiments”.
Even on my 770 with rather poor page turning ergonomics in FBReader, I use the rather awkward button instead of the screen. It may be related to tactile feedback rather than the actual movements required.
While I hope touchscreens become ubiquitous on readers, I think their main advantage is for simplifying hardware, improving usability of menus, annotation, more input options and keyboard input. I don’t think I’d be comfortable using a reader without a hardware page turn key. I’d even be happy with one “page forward” key with “page back” done on the touchscreen.
I read a lot of books on my iPhone with Stanza. I admitt I read more on subway than at home, but I can also read for hours in train…
In Stanza, you can choose many colours as background, like pale grey, for example, which can make the screen less brightening. And you can also use the general settings of iPhone to lower the brightness.
It would be nice if Apple would let ereader take over the volume up and down buttons!! Ereader on other devices has had auto scroll, so that may be something that’s coming. I don’t like it much. Page turns are so much less noticable on a digital device, it really doesn’t bother me. I’ve read many many books on the Dell Axim and once you get in the mode your thumb or eyes don’t even notice your doing it. I’m sure kindle would be better, but with the iPhone, you get pocketablitiy.
I don’t have any issues reading in the iPod Touch. I do not find the glare a problem or anything like that. My one complaint is that I do have to be still to read it. I can’t read it on the treadmill like I can with my eBookwise. For the most part though, it is great to read on, and I love only needing to carry around one device. Also, I tried a sony once and found the flicker when you turn the pages to be extremely distracting! If the Kindle ever hits Canada, it might tempt me because I enjoy gadgets. But for now, I am contented with the iPod Touch and a little bit of eBookwise if I want to read at the gym or something.
I like eReader on the iPhone, but I’ve been mostly using Libris which offers access to my Fictionwise bookshelf as well as the large collection of books offered by Feedbooks. It does paging with swiping motions which can be quite small. It allows setting the text and background colors to anything you like. I have no trouble getting immersed during reading.