Reading e-Books on Phones — It’s All in the Settings
I read a lot of e-books, and most of that reading is done using one phone or another. I find the convenience of always having the phone with me makes it the perfect vehicle for reading e-books. A lot of people I hear from have a hard time understanding how I can read books on a small phone for any length of time. I’ve heard repeatedly that some folks can’t read on a phone very long before their eyes hurt. I have to admit I had a hard time understanding why I never have problems reading for hours, and yet others feel negative effects rather quickly. Then I stumbled across Jeff Kirvin’s excellent post, How to read a book on your phone, and it started to click.
Jeff details the mechanics of setting up the display to maximize the reading enjoyment, while minimizing any negative effects. He covers everything from typeface to margin size in his tutorial, and he nails it perfectly. I discovered that I set my phones used for reading e-books in much the same way that Jeff recommends, and I can attest that his methods work. If you have tried reading on your phone but given up in frustration, give Jeff’s methods a try. You might be happily surprised.
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Thanks, James. I can’t get over how many reader programs default to absolutely horrible typography. Just a few settings tweaks can make a world of difference.
Truth is, a lot of it is personal. Each user needs to trial and error until they bingo.
I use Aldiko on Android and I’m extremely happy with it. That app alone has made Caribou Coffee a small fortune. Its way to easy to read late into the night. Its default settings are almost perfect right out of the box for me. The only had to change the font to size 20 whereas default is 16. I will say that I had swiped through over a thousand pages before I made the change though.
I just skimmed through the article, and to be honest, there are several points I don’t entirely agree with. I’ve been reading comfortably and near-daily on PDAs for many years (iPAQ, Axim x50v, iPod Touch), and I will interject a few things I have found beneficial, which others might as well.
Keeping in mind of course that it is all personal preference.
Fonts: despite the author’s preference for serif, I find sans-serif significantly easier on the eyes on small screens. Just make sure to use a font with clearly defined letters and decent spacing (NOT Arial, there are good reasons it has been replaced in Office). There are usability studies which go both ways, which I think is indicative of how personal this is, but I find serif noisy and harder on my eyes when reading most anything but printed books. You can improve line tracking by adjusting the line spacing slightly instead.
Paragraphs: having done both, I don’t actually agree with using indented paragraphs. indents, particularly in conversational text, where lines are short and paragraph marks frequent, get very jumbled in appearance and harder to follow. With such short lines on a PDA screen, it starts to look like the text is irregularly placed on the page if you are reading quickly. A line between paragraphs is much more simply defined, and if you want to reclaim some space, Stanza is great for it’s ability to tweak all line and paragraph spacing. It helped my comfort level and speed immensely.
Screen color and brightness: again, I don’t entirely agree. Pure black on white is very, very hard on your eyes when using a PDA at the normal brightness settings used for day-to-day use of your phone or PDA. It’s great for user interfaces and movies, but for long term reading, it is simply too bright and notably increases eye strain. The term “shining a flashlight in your eyes” comes to mind – it’s usually hyperbole, but it is true that the constant bright direct light is hard on your retina. (Same goes for computer monitors)
Think about paper. Paper is not white. You don’t need super high contrast to read comfortably, just enough contrast. Either turning down your backlight or adjusting your background to a light gray, such that it is closer to the contrast level of paper, is the single best thing you can do to reduce eye strain for long term electronic reading.
This is recommended in the article for low-light, but it is a useful tip under all light, especially if you use a device with a reflective screen which will pick up some ambient light in the sun, giving an experience even close to paper. The ipod’s screen is fairly reflective, which is nice, though it would be nicer if the glass didn’t glare – the iPaq had the best reflective screen I’ve owned, nearly as good in sunlight as e-paper, but with darker blacks, which is e-paper’s biggest current failing.
For all settings, the biggest tip is simply not to shrug off reading as impossible at first try. Adjust each of these settings until you find your best comfort level.
Oh, and get a device with a high resolution screen. The ipod/iphone (320×480) is the bare minimum I would recommend.
Aldiko for Android allows you to change the brightness by sliding your finger up and down the screen. It makes it easy to have the brightness just right. I will admit that I have the brightness is turned all the way down about 90% of the time.
Good point about brightness. I *never* put my iPhone above about 33% brightness, so “full” brightness for me isn’t a problem with black text on white. If you actually jack that up to full, yeah, it’s gonna hurt. (so I don’t do that)
I use eReader (free) on my touch pro 2 and can read for hours without eye strain. The default settings are great and the default background color is a yellowish parchment that is easy on the eyes. I think the only setting i have changed is the font size.
eReader reads .pdb (palm) and with EasyPdb (freeware) I can convert just about anything to .pdb format. It is also connected to Barnes and Noble’s ereader and books can be purchased and loaded directly on the device. LOVE IT.
https://secure.ereader.com/ereader/software/product/22726_wm.htm
I’ve been an ebook fan for about 10 years now, and I agree with much of what Jeff said, although I think a lot is personal preference.
I much prefer unjustified margins, for instance, and sans-serif fonts. (As it happens, Trebuchet is one of my faves, too.)
I’ve come to prefer auto-scroll (in eReader and Mobi) over clicking. I like to set a fairly wide margin, a relatively large font size (14pt), and a very fast speed. I usually find a “sweet spot” where the amount of text I can take in matches the size/speed perfectly.
As much as I still love traditional books, I’ve come to prefer ebooks. The convenience of having my book with me at all times, the ability to scroll and cross reference, and the savings make them very appealing.