Reading On The iPhone: My Experiences

Written by occasional correspondent Lee Peltz

I love to read. It’s a relaxing, simple pass time. I’m also a bit of a nerd and that means I also like comic books. The down side to this is of course that you have to carry your books or comics with you whenever you may have cause to read them. Over the past half a year or so two apps have been released that have eliminated my need carry anything with me but my iPhone: Apple’s iBooks and Marvel Comics universal app.

iBooks is actually a fairly standard ebook reader, very similar to the Kindle and Kobo apps also available through the App Store. It offers a number of standard settings about how the books are displayed: background colour, text size, font, etc., like as do the other apps. But as it’s an Apple-branded app it has one major advantage over the other ebook reader apps: its ability to read any epub formatted book loaded to your iOS device through iTunes. This has allowed me to read a number of free ebooks available through Project Guttenburg, a project dedicated to converting books whose copyrights have expired into free ebook formats. I have read classics works that I wouldn’t normally have read purely because they were free. Reading on the iPhone is a pretty good experience. On the 3GS the text is relatively clear and there is very little eye strain. I can imagine that on the iPhone 4 it looks amazing. I love the ultra-portability that iBooks offers me, I can have dozens of books with me, while caring nothing that I wouldn’t be carrying with me anyway, because of iBooks I haven’t read a traditional paper book in weeks. There is one downside to iBooks that I hope Apple rectifies soon and that is making the iBookstore accessible through iTunes in addition to through the app as with apps, music and videos.

The Marvel Comic’s app is the best comics app available for the iPhone. Developed by Comixology, who also did the DC and Image Comics apps, the Marvel Comics app has a huge selection of classic and new Marvel comics with everything from Spiderman to Captain America to Marvel Zombies. Marvel also has one of the best marketing strategies I have ever seen.  Every week Marvel makes a half dozen or so comics free for the week. Usually these are the first comic in a new storyline or series, and if you like the storyline you will want to continue reading the remainder of the comics in the storyline. Most of the comics are $1.99 and can be downloaded through an in-app purchase, a convenience that has been known to set me back $40 or more when I get sucked into a storyline, which I suppose is the point as far as Marvel is concerned.

To save space on your device you have the option to delete your downloaded comics but they can be re-downloaded for free at any time from the receipts list the kept by the app, something that Apple should do for the App Store, and can be accessed through your Comixology account on any iOS device you have the Marvel app on. Reading comics on the iPhone with this app is one of the best implementations I’ve seen. Each comic is specially formatted to move you from frame to frame and, if necessary from dialog box to dialog box in ensure that even with the iPhone’s small screen you can still see all the action as well as you could in the traditional paper versions and the larger iPad versions. I don’t think I’ll ever need to buy a paper comic ever again!

I should point out that the DC and Image Comics app are virtually identical in function to the Marvel app, but DC doesn’t release anywhere near the same number of free comics as Marvel, and I just prefer Marvel so that’s the one I decided to review.

iBooks, Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Image Comics are all available through the App Store. What is your favourite ebook reader, and comic reader for the iPhone? What do you think of reading on the iPhone? Let us know in the comments below.