Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Readers Hub: Books

Included with the Readers Hub application on the Galaxy S2 is the ability to read books (See my review on the Newspapers part of the Readers Hub). It uses the Kobo e-reader software, and is very straightforward and simple to use.

Now, even though the Galaxy S2 has that nice and big 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus screen, it's still not a replacement for your kindle or regular books - but, it's a very nice thing to have when there's nothing else available!

Now, I haven't actually purchased any books through the app (will let you know if I ever do of course), but there are many free books available. I downloaded Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, and Sun Tzu's Art of War:


The app allows you to easily browse through various categories, and making selections on what to read is as straightforward as you'd expect:



The main part, which of course is actually reading the book ;) is very easy and pleasant to use. There are normal settings you'd expect, like being able to save a bookmark of where you are in the book, or change the font size. It even has a cool "night mode" feature, which inverts the colours (white text on black background instead of black on white...)

One thing that still amazes me about the Galaxy S2 is how black the screen is when it's displaying black! The pixels are actually turned off completely, so they emit no light whatsoever. When viewing stuff on the phone that has a night mode feature at night is always amazing to behold!

Anyway, back to the book reader app - I'm not so sure that I'll ever read a full book on my phone, the screen is big and clear, but it just doesn't beat a good old fashioned book, or even the excellent Amazon Kindle.

Here are some more screen shots of how the text looks:




The above screen shots shows the different font sizes, as well as what "night mode" looks like.

Turning pages is done by a simple tap or a swipe, which produces a very nice looking page flip effect (which you can also change in the settings if  you want...). 

That pretty much covers how the Readers Hub Books part works. Very nice indeed!

Next time I'll cover the Magazine part.

Anyway, till next time!

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