Do you read e-books on a cellphone–and what are your tips?

Comments:

• Roland Rohde says:

  May 29, 2006 at 8:45 am

  I don’t read on my cellphone. Even WAP is pretty awful on the tiny display of my Nokia 6630! My Sonyericsson P800 was a bit better, but still much too small. Even the PDA screen is far too small fro reading and the devices are simply not constructed for comfortable page-flipping. My PDA is aweful to hold in one hand and flip pages…I nearly twist my thumb doing this..and dues to the tiny screen I have to turn pages very often, even though I use an eye-killingly small font already.
  So…no way.
• David Rothman says:

  May 29, 2006 at 10:32 am

  Thanks for the info Roland. Bill J seemed to think I wasn’t factoring in cellphones enough in doing the poll, and I want to keep an open mind. I very much encourage readers using cellphones for e-books to speak up here and share their experiences and tips. It could be that the percentage of people using cellphones for e-books in the Real World is higher than the percentage of TeleBlog readers doing so, although I doubt this. Because of limits such as the screen, I just don’t think people would count cellphones among their ideal devices for book-reading. But again, we’ll see. Thanks! David
• Josh says:

  May 30, 2006 at 1:21 am

  I investigated reading on my mobile (a sony ericsson K750i) a while ago and found a fantastic program called ReadManiac. You install the program onto your computer and it allows you to compile one or more books into a java midlet with a self contained reader which can then be uploaded (via bluetooth, usb, etc..) and used on any java-enabled mobile phone. I found the reader itself to be excellent, with good bookmarking facilities and fantastic user options for tweaking the display to make it easier to read off your cellphone…. however, I do not use it because unfortunately it goes through my batteries pretty quickly and then I can not make calls. If not for that one flaw I would no doubt read from my phone a great deal, if you have a phone with good battery life I highly encourage you to try out the program.

  ReadManiac; http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/ReadManiac/index.htm
• David Rothman says:

  May 30, 2006 at 4:33 am

  Thanks, Josh. If/when other cellphone users show up, I’d welcome further discussion of battery-related issues. – David
• Tony R says:

  May 30, 2006 at 3:21 pm

  I had a C500 for over a year and have had an iMate SP5 for 6 months now. These are both Windows Mobile smartphones.

  One of the major reasons I buy smartphones is to read books and newspapers.

  I’ve read probably 30 or so books on these, plus I read the newspaper every morning. I use iSilo, which is pretty much perfect: no showy graphics, just nice clear text.
  I’ve tried a few other readers (eg MobiPocket, so I could buy ebooks instead of buying the real book and then trying to find a dodgy copy of the text on the internet), but I can’t believe so many companies can screw up such a basic piece of software! They’re either horribly bloated, or don’t read anything but text files.

  The screens on smartphones are quite small, but the SP5 has a 320×240 resolution, cleartype, and a VERY bright screen.

  I recently bought a Palm TX to read books with, but the smartphone is tiny in comparison, easier to hold without getting a sore wrist, has the navigation buttons in the right place (it’s hard to hold a PDA and still reach the buttons comfortably at the bottom of the screen), and always with me.

  I will probably sell the TX and keep the smartphone.

  I read a lot in bed, and I find it much more comfortable reading from the phone than trying to get into comfortable position with a paperback, and it is insanely great not to have to have a turn on a reading lamp & risk waking the wife.

  I can read for 6 or 7 hours without the battery running out. I don’t know how long the battery would last altogether since I charge every day.
• David Rothman says:

  May 30, 2006 at 3:28 pm

  Thanks for all those great tips, Tony, and if you have any to add, please feel free to do so. What’s more, I’d welcome more info on how Mobipocket ran on your phone. all the pros and cons? Also, what version of Mobi were you running? Thanks. David
• Priscilla says:

  June 2, 2006 at 7:14 pm

  I have Mobipocket Reader 4.9 on a Sony Ericsonn P900, with 84 books and 7 dictionaries… everything runs fine, even from the memory card.
• kamran says:

  September 13, 2006 at 5:15 am

  dear Josh Said
  thanks for your link
• kumar says:

  November 29, 2006 at 8:08 am

  I got a sony k 750i but i cant find a good e book reader supportin the mobile. So please help me with where to find the reader or supported books