iPhone For eBooks ~ A Review

Dang I spent all this time writing a review for iPhone using eBooks and it is gone…

Strange, OK I am at work but lucky I have my camera so here we go again.

I just bought this thing Friday but the first thing I want to do with my iPhone was try and read a PDF file. I was successful but there are certain things you should know before purchasing an iPhone for this use.

Apple has locked the iPhone down. It currently accepts only files from programs like iTunes and iPhoto and iCal and your contacts from Yahoo etc etc. The great thing is the eMail which can be setup to use Gmail.

So that my good readers is how I got the PDFs to the iPhone. I eMailed them to my self. I am sure very quickly here they will open the SDK up to third party developers but I expect it will take a little time before this is fixed. Maybe the hackers out there will fix this quicker than that.

As you can see here once you receive the PDF files in email the iPhone identifies them and shows you it can display them. So here you have it the iPhone supports PDF files.

There is the front cover of a pretty eBook on your iPhone. Crystal clear and very sharp. The screen brightness adjusts itself to the type of light you are viewing it in. This is a killer app.

Now here is the fly in the ointment. The default view of the PDF has a very small font size and unlike videos and the internet application you can not flip the phone to show you the PDF in wide screen which would make the font much more readable. I hope they add an Adobe Reader and the ability to flip the screen soon here. When that is done the iPhone will be a full blown eBook Reader for the smart shopper.

All is not lost though folks. The iPhone does allow you to zoom into the PDF on the screen thus allowing the font to become readable the only issue is that you will then have to use your finger to move the page so that you can read the eBook. Not a good solution for normal use but it can be workable.

So in summary the iPhone makes calls, shows videos and plays music not to mention it gives you internet access and in a pinch it even lets you read PDFs but it is not fully functioning as an eBook Reader YET.

The facts are Adobe has a reader already built for OSX which is what is running under the pretty buttons on an iPhone in all it’s glory and I am sure they can easily adapt their existing Reader to the iPhone. So that means this issue can easily be resolved in the coming months.

I think this does mean the end of the single function expensive eBook Readers. The iPhone is powerful, sleek, sexy, and from what I have shown you here is fully capable of doing the very simple task of acting as an eBook Reader without much effort. It’s only a matter of time.

Tags: eBook Tools, iTunes