Smartphones serve various purposes. They serve as an easy mode of communication with email, social networks and various instant messaging apps in the palms of your hand. You can also browse the web and watch movies on the move. Yes, you can make calls and send SMS too. But one thing that is gathering more users is e-books and the ability to read them easily on a smartphone. When you choose an e-book reader, you must also keep in mind performance and also the selection of books offered by the app. Here is a list of apps which make it easier to catch up on your reading lists on your Android device.
Google Play Books
The official app from Google comes installed on a number of Android devices. Google even began allowing Indian users to purchase books from the Play Store at the end of February this year. Google says that it has over 4 million titles and while a few are free, most start from Rs 50. Google Books saves your position so you can resume reading your book anytime and also if you sync devices on any device. One can save books to be read offline. There are a ton of display options and one can chose font size, font type, line height and even alignment of the fonts. There are two themes – dark and light – and users can also adjust brightness.
Flipkart e-books
The Flipkart e-book Android app is the oldest among the platforms, with it arriving on iOS and Windows Phone just last month. Users can purchase e-books for the Flipkart e-books store which offers a pretty extensive collection and read them on the go through the app, even if offline. The app allows you to browse through the e-books on the store, sample them and even purchase them. It has a built in dictionary which allows you to get definitions of words. It syncs your reading location, so you can pick up your reading on another device. You can all take notes, highlight text, search and add multiple books with the app.
Kindle eReader
The Kindle eReader is by far one of the most popular and well know e-book reading apps. Amazon is a worldwide leader in both sales of physical and e-book sales. The collection is also one of the best and you will most likely find what you are looking for at the best prices. It has all the basic features one finds in most e-book readers like free books, purchase of paid books, built in dictionary, Google, and Wikipedia and syncing of e-books between devices with Whispersync technology. The first chapter of most books is free. The Kindle app allows you to customize various settings of the app like font size, screen brightness, background color, and orientation for reading your books.
Aldiko Book Reader
This is one of my favorite apps on this list. The Aldiko Book reader app comes in two versions a ad-supported free version and a paid one which costs around Rs 170. The apps supports all major e-book formats like EPUB, PDF as well as Adobe DRM encrypted e-books. Users can import their own books into the app or purchase books through the app. It has a fully customizable reading experience, where users can adjust the font size, font type, font and background colors, margin, alignment, line spacing and brightness. There is also a night time reading mode.
Moon Reader
This is one of the most feature rich apps. Users can read thousands of e-books for free and it also supports online e-book libraries. It supports various formats like epub, mobi, chm, cbr, cbz, umd, fb2, txt, html, rar, zip or OPDS. It has various visual options like line space, font scale, bold, italic, shadow, justified alignment, alpha colors, fading edge etc. One of the best features is that it has over 10 themes which include a day & night mode switcher. You can even use the volume keys of your device to switch between pages. The brightness can be adjusted by just sliding your finger along the left edge of the screen. There are 5 page flip animations. Users can use DropBox to back up their books and it also has a translation feature.
| Google Play Books | Flipkart e-Books |
Kindle e-reader |
Aldiko Book Reader | Moon Reader | |
| Buy e-books |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Indian Pricing | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Import e-books |
Yes/Need to upload to Google Drive | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Supports DRM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Sync Support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes through DropBox | Only in pro version |
| Dictionary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Day/Night Theme | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
This is our pick of best reading apps. What’s yours?
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