The Next Hot e-Reader: The iPhone | Hacker News Reader

The Next Hot e-Reader: The iPhone

gigaom.com

17 pointsafrombie20 comments

I own both an iphone and kindle. It's a lot easier to read for longer durations on the kindle due to the e-ink display. Also, the battery lasts a lot longer since the e-ink virtually consumes no static power.

For now, in my opinion, the ebook edge goes to the kindle.

Agreed 100%.

I get the feeling that many of the people who tout the iPhone/Tablet as an eBook reader have never tried a Kindle or something with e-ink. The experience just doesn't compare, and you don't have to worry about an hour of reading doing serious damage to your battery.

Also I lost all respect for Om's analysis abilities after hearing him talk on This Week in Tech a month or two ago.

I recently bought the Bebook reader. It's been on for almost a week now and shows 75% charge. We can use it to read books in bed, actually better than an actual book because you can keep your head on the pillow and still "turn pages" easily. I had an iPhone before, but it just wasn't comfortable enough to read on it.

I've only got an iPhone so I can't compare it to eBook readers but reading on the iPhone is good enough for me not to even consider buying an e-reader. Especially since the iPhone offers so many more than just being able to read books on it. (Perhaps once I've actually used an e-reader I'll whistle a different tune :)

Also, the battery consumption for just reading isn't that bad. I've found that the battery drains the quickest when wi-fi is on or playing intensive games. I, personally, wouldn't be worried about battery life when reading a book.

(Man, what has the world come to! I'm becoming an Apple apologist!)

I get the feeling that many of the people who tout the iPhone/Tablet as an eBook reader have never tried a Kindle or something with e-ink.

For awhile, I had both a Sony Reader (e-ink) and an iPhone. While sitting around and reading linearly for an extended period was much better on the Reader, I found that the iPhone was worlds better as an eReader for reference material. This is not so much because the iPhone is so great as a reader -- really, with its small screen size and backlit LCD screen, it leaves a lot to be desired. However the iPhone is so much more interactive. And when using reference materials, one is very much interacting. (Searching, flipping, zooming)

I keep waiting for someone to produce a device for me to compile my own content in the form of reference materials. It has to be large enough to read comfortably, interactive enough to enable quick "flipping" and searching, yet light enough to carry everywhere. It should also be an "instant-on" device. So far, I've not found a device to satisfy me.

As for Om's analysis, I think the best way to judge a pundit is to hold some specialized knowledge about an obscure but interesting corner of programming. Then you can see if they have real insight, or if they're just selling a bill of goods that the mainstream will buy.

I have to agree with this article. Since getting the Kindle app for my iPhone I haven't used the Kindle itself once.

There's no doubt that the Kindle is better for reading than the iPhone. But I always have the iPhone with me so it's easier when I have a few spare minutes to get some reading done.

And I often read in bed and the iPhone screen can be read without supplemental light whereas with the Kindle I need a light on.

The app has some useful features to reduce eye strain, too. You can change the font size, lock the auto-rotation, and change to white-on-black for night reading.

I've been reading novels from non-iPhone cell phones with screens around 55 mm for the last 5 years. I've gone through around 80 books so far.

I read mostly in the bus to work. I'm always carrying my phone, a kindle or a paperback book would be a big extra thing to carry along.

One win for the e-ink display would be that it'd be readable in bright sunlight, unlike the active display of the phone.

I can't believe Apple hasn't just built a standard "Books" app and added a Book Store alongside the App and Music stores. I suppose it's a licensing issue, but they already sell audiobooks, don't they?

I don't think it is a licensing issue, there are plenty of online book sellers who would have been happy to provide Apple with a way to sell ebooks on the Iphone, Apple properly just didn't believe it would be worth enough.

A few years back the iTunes store used to sell pamphlets on things like how-tos as PDFs, but they seem to have gone now.

http://www.mcelhearn.com/2004/12/17/organize-pdf-files-in-it...

iTunes still has PDFs for download under iTunes U (mostly slides that come with video lectures and that sort of thing.) I believe they're all free, though.

I've been reading A LOT on my iPhone lately since starting to use instapaper. It's been amazing except for only little thing; I get nauseated occasionally staring at the screen (especially when moving). The screen is possibly to small or too bright?

The form factor might not be quite right.

Enjoy your eyes while they still work.

Although I can't find a (reliable) cite after five minutes of Googling, I'm quite sure that there's no causal link of any kind between the amount of strain you put your eyes through on a day-to-day basis, and eventual vision loss. The reason people think this is that people who don't realize their vision already needs correction (such as children) tend to strain their eyes more, and do other things such as sitting close to the TV, to make up for their existing impairment. Thus, there's a correlation, but not a causation.

(As a side note, "masturbation will make you go blind" is, although taken less seriously, another sentiment with the same roots: people mistake the correlation of teenagers' eyes altering in correction requirements, along with an increase in masturbational frequency, as another causation.)

Well, yes and no. Many factors affect visual acuity including the shape of the eyeball (affects focal point of lens on retina), cornea (defects cause astigmatism), retinal damage like macular degeneration which leads to functional blindness, and the function of the muscles which adjust our focus within our visual range. Eye strain can take a significant toll on those muscles and eventually lead to a sometimes significant loss of visual acuity (myopia.) Fortunately the muscles can often be retrained. Search Amazon for books on vision correction and you will find a ton of books that essentially help you retrain your eye muscles to improve your visual acuity.

sample book on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Relearning-See-Improve-Eyesight-Natura...

Right. By "eventual vision loss," I meant the permanent kind. It's everyone's responsibility to go stare at some mountains every once in a while :)

It's bad that you can't copy your PDFs into iPhone and read those later. Not unless it's jail broken. iPhone can render PDF, but only when the file is sent as mail attachment or downloaded from web.

This single thing is preventing me from purchasing the iPhone. I have a lots of PDFs and need to read those over time.

You can - I use the WiFi Discover app for this. But the iPhone is not suitable for long reading - small screen, battery - get a dedicated ebook reader instead.

Would having to use the (free) Dropbox iPhone app as an intermediate step bother you?

1. Sign up for Dropbox, if you haven't already; put PDFs you want to read into your Dropbox, and, obviously, buy an iPhone.

2. Install the Dropbox iPhone app.

3. In the Dropbox iPhone app, mark the PDFs as "favorites," and they'll be synced to the iPhone's drive, accessible whether or not the phone is online.

There are all the "network drive" applications as well, of course, but I think this is the best of both worlds: if you're at home the LAN sync will negate any extra bandwidth usage, while if you're out somewhere you can still pull the file from the network (once) and then keep it stored locally from then on. Then again, you can't do the "promiscuous sharing to anything around me that can speak Bonjour" this way, but I'm guessing you probably don't want people pirating books off your phone anyway :)

At 260+ DPI, the Droid will be my next e-Reader.

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