Reader’s Corner: The iPhone Is My Preferred Ereader

I am try­ing to make the effort to post some­thing new every­day or every other day. Just don’t hold me to it if I hap­pen to lapse a bit, ok? Any­way, as I was sit­ting at my desk, brain­storm­ing for a new topic, I found myself star­ing at my Sony Reader and saw that it hadn’t been charged in more than a month. The bat­tery was dead of course from non-usage.

Today, I charged her up because I remem­bered that I had a book I needed to read on that thing. But you know some­thing? I haven’t been read­ing on my Sony lately. Why? My cell­phone is just so much more convenient.

I’m not review­ing iPhone appli­ca­tions here but list­ing the reader apps that I am cur­rently using on my iPhone. I’m sure you can find all kinds of reviews out there on google if that is what you like. This is just one reader’s opin­ion and expe­ri­ence with using the iPhone as a eread­ing device. I am also no tech­ni­cal guru and have no tech savvy what­ever. I am just a reader with an opin­ion and an iPhone (that I hope to upgrade today at no charge for the 32GB 3 GS).

eReader App for iPhone

As much I lurve my Sony Reader, I like read­ing on my iPhone more. Why? Well, it doesn’t look too shabby as you can see for your­self from the pics (click on image to enlarge). The book I am cur­rently read­ing on it is “The Pusher” by Ed McBain. Doesn’t it look nice? Sure the screen is small but I’m used to that hav­ing had a Pocket PC and using ubook. I’m sure the tiny print is prob­a­bly what’s respon­si­ble for mak­ing me four eyed but I don’t actu­ally mind read­ing on my iPhone and the expe­ri­ence has actu­ally been quite pleasant.

The eReader Pro app doesn’t have as much flex as say Stanza when it comes to orga­niz­ing your ebooks. What I do love about eReader Pro is the abil­ity to buy my ebooks from Fic­tion­wise, usu­ally the multi-formatted ebooks or the DRM’d ereader for­mat (.pdb) and when I open the appli­ca­tion up on my iPhone, the books are auto­mat­i­cally down­loaded to my library. All I have to do is read. That almost sounds like a Kin­dle, doesn’t it?

Stanza Is Still #1

I love read­ing on Stanza just a tiny bit more than eReader and even added, with the help of Jane, the capa­bil­ity to use Calibre2Web with it which makes it full of win. I am able to have a online ebook cat­a­log that is nicely orga­nized and have my books at my dis­posal as long as my computer/laptop is run­ning. I guess this makes my com­puter my own per­sonal server. Of course, your ebooks must be con­verted to ePub. Use google to under­stand how to do that.

Calibre2Web makes it pos­si­ble for me not to have to down­load every­thing to my iPhone and more impor­tantly, it takes away the tedious job of hav­ing to down­load ebooks one at a time. How awe­some is that? To set up Calibre2Web is no pic­nic and it took me approx­i­mately 4 hours to get it done but it is so worth the effort and the accom­pa­ny­ing headache to set it up. In fact, Jane sounded like she prob­a­bly could have stran­gled me but she was patient with me till the end. As usual.

Cell­phones Make Good Read­ing Devices

Cell­phones make good read­ing devices but that is just this reader’s opin­ion. I know some peo­ple do not like the screen size for read­ing. I never would have thought or said that a year ago but I strongly stand behind that state­ment today. Cell­phones offer, what else, con­ve­nience. It’s my one stop shop for phone/music/reading/videos/movies and so on and so forth. It’s an all in one enter­tain­ment center.

In fact, all I would really need or require of my iPhone is that the bat­tery life be supe­rior. Apple has finally made a ver­sion of the iPhone that I am will­ing to upgrade to because it offers 32GB of stor­age space. I mean, imag­ine, the capac­ity to upload 100+ ebooks on a cell­phone that I can slip into my purse or clip to my hip (I do a lot of the for­mer). Isn’t that nice?

The Sony Reader PRS 505 is nice, too, but com­pared to the iPhone, it’s bulky and it doesn’t fit into my junky purse well at all; and sure, it will play your mp3’s and dis­play pic­tures for you. Can you say so what? And to add insult to injury, it’s not even back­lit due to the well known tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions inher­ent of E-Ink devices but you can buy a inte­grated read­ing light to resolve that issue. How­ever, my iPhone is already back­lit so, yeah. Is it fair to com­pare a smart­phone to a ded­i­cated reader? Prob­a­bly not but I don’t much care.

I used to use Zachary Bedell’s Book­shelf but as nice as that appli­ca­tion is, I rarely if ever use it any­more. It just doesn’t hold up to the com­pe­ti­tion, unfor­tu­nately. So, this wraps up my brief arti­cle on why my iPhone is pre­ferred over my Sony Reader. I will still read on my Sony Reader, of course, hell, I paid for it, but it is a sec­ondary device. The only prob­lem I can see right now with using my iPhone is that I am lock­ing myself into the eReader for­mat and if Fic­tion­wise should go belly up, my ebooks would be going with them. Maybe. Unless I learn how to strip the DRM off these ebooks but then that’s illegal.

Con­clu­sion
iPhone equals con­ve­nience and it’s only nat­ural to assume that more and more peo­ple will be read­ing on them. The only thing really miss­ing is the one-click pur­chase and auto-download fea­ture from your phone (not your desk­top). You can use Safari and nav­i­gate to those web­sites to pur­chase your ebooks at Stanza and/or eReader Pro. I desire some­thing akin to iTunes where you search, select and pur­chase as they say, “over the air.” I don’t uti­lize Stanza or eReader Pro to pur­chase ebooks. Nope. It’s a major headache. But then that dis­cus­sion goes beyond the scope of my arti­cle. I’m just hear to tell you that read­ing on a cell­phone is a lot more appeal­ing and con­ve­nient than read­ing on a bulky, ded­i­cated ereader device. I’m sure every­thing I’ve writ­ten thus far is not news but hey, I enjoyed writ­ing it anyway.