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iPhone 4 for Reading PDF's

G

ghosty86

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2007
13
0
Hi,

I am considering whether to upgrade my iPhone 3G to an iPhone 4 or keep my 3G and buy an iPad.

To be honest the main reason I am wanting an iPad is to use as an ebook reader (mainly PDF's).

So I was wondering how good the iPhone is for reading PDF books? Does the small screen size really make a negative difference over the iPad?
 
I use mine to read PDFs, and its ok, not really fast but its acceptable. I have pretty good eyes and just put the phone on its side and zoom in so the width of the text is the width of the screen and can read it fine.
 
Thanks for the prompt reply :)

Does it also save what page you viewed last? Like a bookmark or something?

Do you have an iPad as comparison? Im guessing the bigger screen would make it much better for reading...but if thats the main reason id be buying an iPad vs the upgrade from 3G to iPhone 4...not sure which would be the best bet really? :confused:
 
Yeah it saves it in memory, but you can leave a bookmark as well.

For example, I was reading Harry Potter last night on my iPad, before I went to bed I bookmarked it. This morning I continued with it as my iPhone had synced it. Pretty cool as it's linked to iTunes accounts.

If you are doing heavy reading, i'd recommend getting an iPad (I have iPhone 4 as well) but the display on the iPhone 4 makes it great for short reading as well.
 
You can now read PDF's on your iphone natively. When you are on your computer drag the pdf into the ibooks tab and then sync. PDF will be in your ibooks app. its really nice!
 
just wondering what you guys use to read pdfs. my pdfs will mainly be ebooks, so do you use goodreader or ibook?
 
ihav0frnds said:
just wondering what you guys use to read pdfs. my pdfs will mainly be ebooks, so do you use goodreader or ibook?
Click to expand...

I bought goodreader, but I don't see the benefit over iBooks. I think iBooks controls better and is a lot easier to use.
 
The smoothest PDF reading I've seen so far is on iBooks. I have an iPhone 4, but I'll probably buy the next-gen iPad next year so I can read tech/code books on something slightly larger.

iPhone 4 works when you're mobile, or want to look something up "in a pinch", but if you're wanting to read PDF's that have technical material, code snippets, etc, the screen real estate of the iPad probably does a bit better.
 
goodreader vs. ibooks

the only real benefit I can see to reading pdfs in goodreader is the ability to scan/recode textual information so that you don't need to zoom (which can be slow) to read larger text, instead it recreates it as larger text so it is easier to read. Other differences with goodreader are it has more options to get your pdfs. I've found that dropbox+ibooks is just as conveinent as mobileme+goodreader though.
 
I use the iPad & iPhone 4 both to read normal .epub books and also PDFs (magazines, books, etc.) and it works great in iBook applications. I noticed that on PDFs, the more complex they are, such as magazines with all kinds of different fonts pictures etc, the slower it can become. But only by a fraction, not enough to become frustrated.

I'd go for it on the iPad, you wont' be sorry.
 
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