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webOS eReader Roundup!

By: , 6/23/2010 5:46 pm | 16 comments

Do you want to read a book on your phone?  3.1 inches is not a lot of real estate to read a book on, but nonetheless, there are still e-books out there for webOS.  We at webOSroundup do the dirty work, so you don’t have to.

Right now in the App catalog, there are 343 apps in the Book category.  None of those apps begin with a “K” and end with an “indle,” but there are a few worth mentioning.  80 of those apps are from Appible LLC. AppBookShop, a relatively new entrant into the App Catalog, is adding more and more e-book apps every day.  Another one of note is e-books by Kobo. Last but not least is pReader.

Appible

All of Appible’s apps sell for $0.99, but most of the books are public domain books. This means they can be found for free in other places on the Internet. Each book is sold seperately. There appears to have been some sort of thought given to the idea of accessing all Appible books from any app, but that functionality is not available. As far as readability, it’s not horrible, but be prepared to scroll. And by “scroll,” I mean the entire book is one big page that you have to scroll down, and down, and down some more…. The app gives you the ability to manually set a bookmark, but it does not do any sort of auto-bookmarking. You can also jump to a specific chapter. Not too robust.

There are some nicer features that add do a little extra readability. It makes use of the accelerometer, and allows landscape mode reading. With a touch, you can hide/show the menu buttons on the top and bottom, allowing for full screen reading.

For the record, the book that I picked as a sample was The Time Machine by HG Wells.

In a word, these apps are Spamtastic. Stay away. The only situation I could see myself buying one of these books is if I really needed to get this while I was out and away from a computer. Otherwise, save your $0.99.

AppBookShop

Next up are the books from AppBookShop. This is another example of public-domain books and plays which are packaged in a webOS app. The sample I picked from their free selection was a Sigmund Freud “book.” After looking at it for a few minutes, it appears to have a very basic user interface (similar to Appible’s UI, but without some of their nicer extras). The most interesting part is that it basically takes the information on the Wikipedia page about Freud and makes it into an app. Umm… really?!?! At least this one was free.  (It is noted in the references that the source of this info is Wikipedia, but really. Really?)  To make matters worse, there is a advertisement at the bottom of the screen that takes up just enough space to make it annoying. At a quick glance, it appears that a number of their apps just direct grabs of a Wikipedia entry. Overall, I’m very unimpressed.

AppBookShop’s book range in price from $0.99 up to $3.99.  Our recommendation: save your money, unless you are in some sort of pinch.

Kobo

Next up is eBooks by Kobo. Now we have a real contender on our hands. This app is a free download, but once you set up a Kobo account, you have access to thousands of books. There are a whole host of free, public domain books, along with e-books that you can preview and purchase. Want to buy a book thats on the New York Times Bestseller list? Go ahead. Want to find a a new book that is in the news? It’s there. Want to get a book that is on Oprah’s reading list. Yup, those are there too.

Now, most of these books cost $9.99 and up, but you’re buying a brand new book, so thats no surprise. The highest price that I could find was $43.49 (for a book about the Tudors), and the lowest (non-free) price I saw was $0.79. If you are interested in looking at the selection, it is available on their website. Kobo is also about to get a larger selection, because they are merging with Borders. By larger, I mean over a million titles. You shouldn’t have a problem finding the book you want.

So other than book selection, the most important part of an eReader is the readability. The default text is relatively easy on the eyes. Although, you cannot change the font type, size or color. The menus hide with a simple touch of the screen. Pages advance with a nice flick of the screen. If you want to skip forward in a chapter, the app makes it easy to do so. At the end of each chapter, it auto-advances to the next chapter. As far as bookmarking goes, you have to manually set them: no auto-saves, here.

Kobo has done a nice job with this app. It’s worth mentioning that Borders is merging their bookstore with Kobo’s eBook store. Kobo has also just released their answer to the Kindle/Nook/iPad with their budget-friendly Kobo eReader. Any books purchased through the Kobo/Borders eBook store will be readable on your webOS device and Kobo eReader.

[Click here to download eBooks by Kobo directly to your webOS device.]

pReader

pReader is an eBook Reader for webOS with homebrew roots that currently supports several different eBook standards. These include: plain-text, HTML books, PalmDOC, MobiPocket, eReader and ePub files. While pReader does not offer the functionality of in-app downloading of new titles, it does score points for letting your read eBooks that you already have. In order to read these books, all you have to do is load them on the media (USB) partition of your webOS device, click the “Add book to library” button in the app, and you’re all set. Check out Project Gutenburg or their mobile site.  You will find a treasure trove of free public domain works. By visiting the mobile website on your webOS device, you can search for and download an eBook in multiple formats.

As for customization options, this app certainly has ‘em. Landscape, portrait. Full Screen. Text size. Color. Scrolling manner. And that’s just to name a few.

While reading, pReader auto-saves your place. You can also set manual bookmarks. If you are looking to skip ahead, you have the ability to skip to a certain percentage of the way through the book. You have the option to advance pages by a click or a swipe. Want the book to auto-scroll, there is a setting for that as well. If at all you get confused by all of the settings, there is an extensive help section, as well as an active thread on the Precentral forums.

Even though you cannot purchase new books using pReader, I would have to say that with the comboination of it and Project Gutenburg, webOS users have an excellent option for reading e-books. If you are even the slightest bit interested in reading a book on your webOS device, I’d highly recommend checking pReader out.

[Click here to download pReader directly to your webOS device.]

Looking forward to the future

Want more options? Well, we may be in luck. For in our near future, webOS devices may get a huge new source of eBooks. As we have reported before, HP and Barnes and Noble have teamed up to make an eBook Store. A Windows version of the eReader is available for download. Could a webOS version be far off? Could we see a webOS-powered Nook replacement? Time will tell.

Now webOS lovers, the decision is yours. Go forth and read!

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  • Terry

    Anyone want to send me there – :P

  • http://twitter.com/bshedwick Brad Shedwick

    ??

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  • http://www.webosroundup.com/ DanR

    Hey there Brad! Great post! I was wondering if you had a chance to play with Popelli reader and if this one stacked up well with the others worth mentioning (Kobo, pReader)…?

    Thanks! Again, great review. I've been using the Kobo eReader app and like it a lot.

  • http://twitter.com/bshedwick Brad Shedwick

    I have not tried it out. I'm going to have to test it out as well

  • PGovotsos

    You neglected to mention the most important feature of pReader. The fact that it can read DRMed or protected books. Preader can read BRMed books in the EReader or Mobipocket formats. This is great because it allows you to read books purchased from Ereader.com, Fictionwise.com, and B&N.com. pReader is the only book reader for WebOS that allows you to read current, copyrighted books.

    You also forgot to mention Popelli Reader. This is another good ebook reader for WebOS. It DOESN'T let you read DRMed books, but it is a fairly snappy program.

    There is another key difference between pReader & Popelli. pReadere does all document conversion locally on the phone. Popelli does all document conversion remotely – uploading the document to a server, converting it, then downloading it back to the phone. Both programs convert documents in about the same time, but if you are in an area with no reception or someplace the phone must be turned off (airplane), you will not be able to open a new, previously unread book on Popelli, but you will in pReader.

    Another big plus for pReader is that it is free. Popelli reader is $2.00, but is on sale for $1.00 during Palm's 50% sale.

  • PGovotsos

    Popelli reader is a good product, but it can only read unencrypted books – no books that have DRM. It's a fairly snappy performer. Big minus to it, for me, besides no DRM is that whenever you open a book, it will be uploaded to a server for conversion then downloaded back to your phone. If you are somewhere with no signal or must have the radio off (on an airplane), you will not be able to open a new book because it can't send it to the conversion server.

    Popelli is much less configurable than pReader. You can only “turn pages” by swiping (pReader offers multiple methods), can't have full screen display (always have icon bars at top & bottom of screen) so there is less text on screen at any one time – more page turns.

    Popelli also costs $2 ($1 during sale) and pReader is free. pReader does everything Popelli does plus much more. It seems like the developer of Popelli has stopped working on it – there have been no updates since March and he's not responding on the support board. Jappus (author of pReader) is very active and is constantly updating the app with fixes and new features (just not right now – he's on vacation and finishing his thesis). He is very responsive and adds pretty much any feature users have asked for.

    Unless things change with Popelli, I wouldn't buy it right now, just go with pReader. You'll probably be happier. Popelli isn't a bad program, just weaker than pReader.

  • PGovotsos

    Kobe has a decent selection of books, but the reader itself is very limited compared to pReader or even Popelli. Also, the books are pretty expensive. If you want to read new books, go to Fictionwise.com and purchase Multiformat or eReader formatted books and read them in pReader. You can also buy books from BN.com. If you get them from BN, make sure you download them to your PC. That way you will get the eReader formatted book and not ePub (pReader supports eReader DRM but not ePub DRM yet (Jappus is working on that)).

    If you like science fiction or fantasy, go to baen.com/library – Baen has a few hundred of their books available there with no DRM for free. If you want more Baen books, go to webscription.net there you can buy past and present books from Baen with no DRM. You can buy individual books or they have month packs with 4 – 6 books $10 – $15. You can download them in multiple formats, but Mobipocket is probably the easiest to use with pReader.

  • PGovotsos

    Regarding a WebOS version of eReader, chances are nearly nil. Many of us have been peppering ereader.com and Barnes & Noble (now owns ereader.com and fictionwise.com) with emails and posts to the forums asking for this and the answer has consistently been NO.

    Apparently, iSilo (an old favorite from the PalmOS days) is developing a WebOS version of iSilo. Probably won't see it until after July 1 when PDK apps become available though.

  • Jckatz

    Also because pReader can read Mobi DMR it works with FREE library books, any library that uses OVERDRIVE has many (not as many as Adobe and ePub) Mobi reader books. Since my eBook reader does Adobe and ePub its nice to be able to use pReader when only Mobi is available.