best e-book reader?

[Flashrat]

Hi all.

I have a HTC Desire Phone (Android 2.1) and expect my Flytouch 3 to arrive in a few days time.

I have Starbooks and Kindle installed on my phone but can't seem to get any graphics, just text. I did download "Rembrandt and His Works" & "How I Found Livingstone [Illustrated]" and while I would expect a book by a famous artist and a book with "Illustrated" in the title to contain pictures, I could perhaps be wrong.

Are these books actually devoid of illustrations, or is my HTC Desire with Kindle/Starbooks unable to show pictures? And would this then be the same with the Flytouch 3?

Am I doing something wrong?

A friend with a Kindle Reader can get pictures, albiet in grey-scale, and another friend with an iPad gets colour pictures in some of his e-books.

Thanks.

 

[Miths000]

I can see pictures with the Android Kindle app - although in the two books I checked in my library that have a few illustrations, they were black and white (and staying that way with a sepia background in the Kindle app), but given their type and the book genres it's fair to assume that they are also originally B/W in the printed editions. So I don't know if the app is able to show color images.

As an unrelated sidenote, I just ordered a Kindle Reader yesterday (wifi only version). I love using the Kindle app on my Galaxy S 2, but at home - or on longer planned trips - it would be nice to have a larger screen than those 4.3" (the Kindle Reader is 6").
And the sync option between Android app, Windows app and Kindle Reader is great, so it's safe to say I'll be sticking with Kindle on my Android phone.

 

[Harry2]

@Flashrat, where did you get the books and what format have the books?

I have a .mobi eBook imported to my Kindle reader app (on my HTC Desire) and the app shows me the color graphics in the book.

As I know it's depends on the ability of reader app and not on the phone's to show graphics in an eBook.

Harry

 

[Flashrat]

@Flashrat, where did you get the books and what format have the books?

I have a .mobi eBook imported to my Kindle reader app (on my HTC Desire) and the app shows me the color graphics in the book.

As I know it's depends on the ability of reader app and not on the phone's to show graphics in an eBook.

Harry

Hi Harry 2

I loaded Kindle onto my phone then went to the Kindle Shop (from one of the buttons of the screen) and found what should have been books with illustrations. The phone downloded them in the way a phone does, and I was shortly looking at a lot of text and couldn't find the illustrations (as promised in the title of one of them).

I guess the books came from Amazon.com.

It may well be that I chose 2 poor examples (they were free books afterall). And while I am still very happy with text based books, there is the odd time I'd love to see the map or diagram etc.

I don't suppose you know the title of a free book I could download with pictures? Anything with pictures.

Thanks again.

 

[Harry2]

Hi Flashrat,
from Kindle I only purchased eBooks without illustrations, sorry.

That .mobi eBook I spoke in my post above, is free but not from Kindle.
I can read that .mobi eBook with the Kindle reader app if I put it in the folder 'kindle' at my SD card.

Google for "mobi ebooks" and you'll find a lot of free books.
My eBook with color illustrations is "Max_und_Moritz_by_Wilhelm_Busch.mobi But it's German language.

Harry

 

[Flashrat]

Hi Flashrat,
from Kindle I only purchased eBooks without illustrations, sorry.

That .mobi eBook I spoke in my post above, is free but not from Kindle.
I can read that .mobi eBook with the Kindle reader app if I put it in the folder 'kindle' at my SD card.

Google for "mobi ebooks" and you'll find a lot of free books.
My eBook with color illustrations is "Max_und_Moritz_by_Wilhelm_Busch.mobi But it's German language.

Harry

Thanks Harry, I'll give it a go when time permits. My German is pretty rusty, actually very poor come to think of it, but if it has pictures then at least I can see if it works OK.

Now just have to wait for the Flytouch to arrive. And figure out what Rooting is. Anyway, back to the HTC Desire for a now. And thanks for the tips.

 

[IvanABQ]

Cool Reader is free, opens many different formats, and is highly customizable.

 

[Gareee]

I'll have to look up calbre. I still haven't seen any reader that can top moon reader, in like 6 months now.

 

[Ayered]

Another vote for Cool Reader. I used to use FBReader on my old tablet (non-Android), but I found out the Android port of FBReader is much more limited than the older version on other platforms. Anyway, I found Cool Reader which supports more file types and continues the tradition of FBReader, with some additional features.

 

[Harry2]

For .mobi eBooks are iReader and Kindle app the best readers IMO.

Cool Reader can't show the pictures in my .mobi book.

Harry

 

[Gareee]

Cool reader also can't use the text to voice feature to read ebooks to you as well, if I'm not mistaken. Combined with the svox classic more human like voices, reading back e books is better than some audio books.

I use moon reader and the text to voice option a lot in the car on long trips.

 

[Slug]

Please remember Android Forum's "no piracy" policy, and refrain from discussing DRM avoidance.

Thanks!

 

[dny238]

You seem to have removed my comment because I mentioned Calibre plugins, let me restate my point without that in there.

1) Moon + Reader is fantastic. It supports a wide variety of formats, has a book shelf, is under continue development and has more options than you can imagine. Tap, flip, drag to change pages whatever you prefer. With/without animations, font size, constant scrolling, text to speech with the paid version, and so on. Really, check it out. It also supports OPDS, a technology that can give you access to book libraries inside the application.

2) Calibre is amazing. It's like iTunes for your books. It has the ability to collect books you've purchased from a variety of sources into one place. You can convert between formats if the DRM allows. You can also take PDFs, txt and word files and convert them into something you can read on a book reader. It also has a nice feature to digest a website and it's current news into a book so you can stay up on the USA Today for instance without having to subscribe to each of the sources. It uses the free content they put on their websites. It also supports OPDS which allows you to publish your library to apps like Moon + Reader without having to be a genius.

Because of some other comments I re-downloaded Cool Reader and would simply encourage anyone who likes it to take a few minutes with Moon + Reader. I can't find a single thing about Cool Reader to make me want to switch. I liked Laputa last year, but they seem to have stopped development.

Rob

 

[rkosharil]

I have converted pdf to epub format but I can't see it clearly and it is too small and not full screen. can someone tell me which converter is the best and also reader that can flip page.

 

[Gareee]

Maybe try the affore mentioned Calibre?

 

[dny238]

I have converted pdf to epub format but I can't see it clearly and it is too small and not full screen. can someone tell me which converter is the best and also reader that can flip page.

PDF's can be hard if the majority of the content is actually scanned images and not text.

If you convert the file with Calibre and don't like it, get a epub editor like Sigil (for the Mac) and fix the HTML yourself.

If anyone is aware of a good 'free' OCR program to convert image PDF's or ePUB's let me know.
Thanks,
Rob

 

[Liberalitas]

I was happy with Aldiko because I needed an eBook reader that supported Adobe DRM. The problem with Aldiko however is that it does not remember the zoom level when changing pages in PDF and handling protected PDFs therefore becomes very cumbersome.

See:
Remember zoom level when changing pages in PDF : Aldiko Customer Support

Does anyone know an eBook reader that supports Adobe DRM and maintains the zoom level?

 

[Harry2]

Have a look at Mantano Reader
There is a free version for trying (with ads).

Harry

 

[Liberalitas]

Thanks Harry! The Mantano Reader Free does the trick. Although it is not faultless as a reviewer pointed out and my first experience has shown.

Almost the best reader for pdf...missing features comparable to adobe reader
Overall very nice for reading pdf books but does not have continuous scroll like adobe reader. Also when zoomed to fit and get to page bottom, going to next page jumps u to bottom, not top of next page..very annoying, having to scroll back up each page. Still, has bookmarks, and nice reader. Fix next page jump , add continuous scroll(basically duplicate adobe reader views) then it will be 5 stars.