ebooks on the iPhone

Got the new iPhone 3G, and I upgraded my older iPhone to the new 2.0 firmware, which allows you to get iPhone applications from iTunes. I've been having a great time with the new iPhone (although things were definitely funky for much of Friday - launching MobileMe, the new iPhone 2.0 Firmware and the Apple 3G at the same time would be a stretch for any company).

I'll blog about what I've found with the new iPhone sometime later after I've had a chance to play with it some more, but I'm really happy to finally have an eBook platform for the iPhone - so I thought I'd do a quick walkthrough of the new eReader software that you can get for free in the iTunes app store. [Disclosure, I work for Ingram Digital, and we do support eReader software as part of our ebook distribution solution].

Downloading the eReader software from iTunes just took a few seconds on the 3G (still less then a minute on the older iPhone). Launching the app is also very fast, only a few seconds.

Some screenshots from Charlie Stross' latest science fiction title Saturn's Children (review courtesy Cory Doctorov). Reading eBooks on the iPhone is gratifying, page turning is a finger flip, and the interface is spare and simple.

Turning the iPhone sidewise gives you the long view. The title bar doesn't disappear, but the developers say that will happen shortly (see the blog comments to this Teleread post). Both views are easy on the eye.

Logging into your bookshelf for eReader.com or Fictionwise.com is straightforward.

Some readers had some difficulties last week, but I had no problem accessing my ebooks. I did get one time-out when I attempted to download all my ebooks, but the second try worked fine.

Here are side-by-sides of the Kindle and eReader on the iPhone (The Stand by Stephen King). The smaller, brighter iPhone screen is showing the same number of words as the Kindle. The Kindle is the premiere ebook reader, but I think that the eReader/iPhone combination is compelling. Listening to music while reading off the iPhone screen is a great experience.

The Kindle is still the winner when you're buying ebooks, though. I bought a few titles from Fictionwise and eReader from the iPhone, but it's not nearly as easy as Kindle's Whispernet experience. Of course, you can only go to one bookstore on the Kindle :-).

 

Comments

[Ahmed]

Actually i like your way of writing mr.
I really agree with any one about the importance of technology in our lifes
Wich reeally makes alot of differnces in our lifes
Thanks sir for this article

[Paul Robinson]

The iPhone shows just as many words as the Kindle! I'm truly shocked by that! Or was that just a peculiarity of the font size you chose?

What are the screen sizes? For some reason, I thought the Kindle had a bigger screen size and so would be able to show many more lines of text.

It also seems that the iPhone displays the text more clearly, too!

[Cart]

Paul, I was surprised too. I used the default font settings for each device and the screenshots were what I get. I was assuming that the Kindle's higher resolution would have resulted in more text, but I think the pixel depth of the iPhone makes up for it. Of course, you can increase the amount of text by reducing font size in both devices, but I found that the default settings were easy for me to read.

[Sol Young]

That's an excellent and amazing point Paul - the screen size looks to be caused by the other unnecessary information around the page, as well as a lot of useless white space.

Cart, is that really the case? Same amount of text on both devices? That's a huge selling point for eReader+iPhone.

Sol Young
http://solyoung.com

[Cart]

Sol, that's the case. The text is tighter on the iPhone but still easy to read.

There was a question on how you get Fictionwise titles into your eReader app. It's easy: just enter the login information for Fictionwise instead of eReader at the "Add Titles" screen. That's not exactly obvious, but it works fine.

[Piaw Na]

Looking at the Kindle screenshot, it's pretty obvious that the font size is set to much higher than the smallest font the Kindle can handle. Setting the Kindle to the smallest font gives you as much text on screen as a typical mass market paperback. Note that this is moot anyway, since the Kindle can last 2 11 hour flights from SFO to MUC and not need a recharge, but the iPhone will die 5 hours into the first flight.

[Cart]

Piaw, agree. The resolution of the Kindle is significantly higher 600x800 vs the iPhone at 320x480, so there's no question that you can get more text at one time on the Kindle. Agree that the battery life on the iPhone is a pain as well - I've been using one of these chargers from iGo (http://www.igo.com/product.asp?sku=3296835) on flights successfully with the 1st gen iPhone.

[James]

Would a better comparison have been to attempt to match perceived font size on both and then compare?

Or you could still proportionally size those images based on physical display size. The fact that both the images are the same size is very misleading.

Sol, I disagree with your comment about "useless white space". The larger margins and spacing can make the reading experience much more pleasant.

[Cart]

James, I put the screenshots with actual size on flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/shipstone/sets/72157606223470807/detail/. I think that both displays at default size are good. Click thru to get actual size.

[Aaron Pressman]

Cartwright - I'm really disappointed by your photo comparison. I have an iPod Touch and a Kindle. The Kindle's screen is about two or three times the surface area of the iPod. Your "actual size" comparison is extremely misleading and makes the two screens appear to be the same physical dimensions. Also, the Kindle has no "default" font size. You can instantly change between five or six choices. A true and useful comparison would set the fonts on each device so they appeared the same size to the reader. If you do so, there's substantially more text showing on the Kindle.

[Tagbert]

I agree that the screen shots you used are misleading. The iPhone screen is 3 inches high. The Kindle screen is 4.75 inches high. That means a that the Kindle can show a lot more text at the same font size than the iPhone.

This set of screen captures shows a book at each of the 6 font sizes in the Kindle: http://flickr.com/photos/tagbert/sets/72157605824797819/

This also does not address the much more stable screen on the Kindle that is easier on the eyes than the backlit iPhone screen.

I have both a Kindle and an iPhone 3G. The iPhone is a great device and I do use it for short bits of reading, but when I want to read a book, I turn to my Kindle. The experience is much better and, while it is not as portable as the iPhone, the Kindle is as portable as a small book.