
The Rise of Phone Reading - T-A
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395
======
kbutler
I was previously very anti-phone reading.

The things that have converted me:

\- high-res, larger-than 3.5" screen.

\- fast page turn, with configurable tap areas

\- realizing that reading vertical columns of text is better

\- Night-time reading - At night, I can dim the display and enable light,
amber colored text on a black background. This combination seems easiest on my
eyes and on my sleeping wife. Better contrast and lower brightness levels are
better.

\- On-the-go, I always have my phone with me, but any other device or a paper
book is another thing to carry around.

\- Content availability - between ebooks, Pocket, PDF readers (yes, they're
cumbersome on the phone), and web access, I have huge amounts of content
available.

Down-sides:

\- Battery life. All that content doesn't do any good if the battery is dead.
Reading with a cord trailing out is less comfortable.

\- I'd like the display to go dimmer. The kindle paperwhite goes really dim,
but cannot invert video, so readability drops with the last few dimness
settings.

~~~
prawn
A big thing for me is for reading when travelling. With a physical book, I
have to cart something bigger around with me. Reading on my phone, I don't
have to carry anything extra. If I want to abandon one book for a while to
read another, it's right there as well.

~~~
sliverstorm
(the same goes for e-readers)

~~~
robmcm
Apart from > With a physical book, I have to cart something bigger around with
me.

------
abalashov
If my own experience is any indication, this will cause for more eyestrain
problems than people realise. My eyes have recovered somewhat only because I
made a serious effort to avoid nonessential uses of my smartphone,
particularly idle reading. I feel much more physiologically comfortable
reading on my Paperwhite or 10" tablet. Size is the primary factor, but so is
light, contrast and resolution.

And yes, my vision is properly corrected and prescription current. I didn't
expect to end up with long-range glasses, computer glasses (a weaker version
of the long-range prescription) AND prescription sunglasses at age 29, but so
it goes.

~~~
rizzin
That's what I thought immediately while reading the article.

Frequent reading on a smartphone must be really horrible for the long-term eye
health. Especially on smartphone, not a tablet. And as far as I know that is
actually the reason for the existance of e-books: the e-ink technology makes
reading on them similar to reading a book regarding the eyestrain. So if you
read in a well lit environment, you should be okay. And I am not sure you can
say that about a smartphone screen.

I have had a Kindle Paperwhite for several years and have been really pleased
by my reading experience so far. The only negative for me is that it is
sometimes kinda slow in drawing pages (especially during interface
navigation), I don't know whether it is caused by slow firmware, hardware or
it is just because of the e-ink technology that causes the interface rendering
to be slow; this makes me feel that the device is unresponsive sometimes.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's limitations of the e-ink technology. Ever notice certain page turns are
slower? They do a "fast refresh" 5 times, and then on the 6th page turn they
do a "full refresh" of the screen to blank the slate and remove any ghosting
left from the previous 5 times. Well, I think they have to do the "full
refresh" when you're navigating menus.

It's been getting better with each generation of Kindle.

------
JustSomeNobody
Moon+ reader has made my phone my ebook reader.

I really wish something would replace PDFs that was much more ereader/phone
friendly so I could read technical books on my phone as well. I have tried
many PDF reader and the format is just too cumbersome for mobile. (Yeah, I get
that is my opinion.)

~~~
derekp7
What would be awesome is if the pdf standard was updated to include multiple
page sizes within the same document. What would be even better is if it
supported marking soft vs. hard returns, so that automatic reflow would work
properly.

~~~
cooper12
The issue is that PDFs are typeset for print. That means things are designed
to look best on the paper size such as using serif fonts and avoiding widows,
orphans, and rivers. Multiple page sizes would be multiple times the cost.
e-books lose all that typesetting and it doesn't always result in the best
experience, but HTML/CSS is catching up in that regard.

~~~
derekp7
What I was thinking of is that output to a PDF could still be primarily
targeted for print, but have the software generate at least 2 pdf documents,
one for letter/A4 size paper, and another that is sized closer to 4x6 with
minimal margins. Then use deduplication so that it doesn't make the file size
much bigger.

------
lmm
> No one expects phones to replace print books altogether.

I do. I've been reading exclusively on my phone for around two years and
couldn't be happier.

~~~
ColinWright
Whereas I hate it with a passion. I don't understand how anyone can prefer
reading on a phone or kindle, but accept as an axiom that you (for one) do. I
respect your choice, please respect mine.

I _hate_ reading on a screen, especially a small one.

~~~
Ollinson
Your use of "screen" seems to suggest that you group e-ink displays and lcd
displays together. Do you really see no practical difference between the two
in reading experience?

A sincere question because I don't enjoy reading on a tablet but a kindle to
me in terms of eye strain is identical if not better than a book.

~~~
ColinWright
I find both experiences unpleasant, although in different ways. Of course, it
may all be enculturation, but the effect is real. When reading e-ink or lcd
displays, after a time I just feel compelled to put it down and do something
else. When reading a book, I often find that time has just gone, and the only
reason to stop is that there is something else that needs doing.

I agree entirely that the convenience of having 6M books at hand and ready to
go at a moments notice is phenomenal, and sometimes I succumb to that
argument. For me, the medium then just kills reading for pleasure stone dead,
and it becomes "read only if you must."

------
waterlesscloud
I find I'm slowly converting to doing everything possible on my phone. Screen
size and processing power finally hit some sort of magic point for me.

Text entry (and thus coding) is still very sub-optimal, but otherwise...

------
cthyon
Elon musk approved =D
[https://youtu.be/uYpZr1ZoxbA?t=132](https://youtu.be/uYpZr1ZoxbA?t=132)

Jokes aside, I am fine with reading articles on my phone, but will definitely
break out my kindle if I am trying to read a book or anything that will take
longer than a period of fifteen minutes or so.

------
rch
After finally getting my recreational reading up to speed with the Nexus 7 and
associated Google Play purchases, I'm left looking for alternative devices
capable of making worthwhile use of my accumulated 'library'. The perils of
lock-in...

~~~
cooper12
FWIW many ebook devices can be rooted to run android and many of them are
already running it, just missing the google additions. It can be done for the
Nook, Amazon's LCD tablets, and Kobo devices too. The tricky issue is that the
google play books app might not result in the best experience for eink
devices.

When I rooted my Nook, the refresh rate was horrid, the eink display would
have to constantly flash the screen due to how it worked, and apps mostly had
black UIs which didn't look as good. The battery life also went down
considerably so there are cons to consider.

------
mbil
Phone reading really clicked with me while reading Infinite Jest. When I
occasionally read sections of my hard copy, I found myself wanting to jump
between footnotes and text via links and to look up definitions by tapping
words.

------
TYPE_FASTER
I am a convert. Having a library that's always with me in my pocket is
awesome.

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codemac
Could this be because large phablets are now fairly standard? Even the iPhone
6 (not plus) would seem monstrous to me a year or more ago, but now is fairly
standard. My S4 seems small now.

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lifeisstillgood
For me this is something I want to have fixed by really good common user
defined CSS - I am fed up with wanting to read 500 words of text, downloading
2MB and having it shrink to 10pts in a slice of five lines between the adverts

I just want the HTML, laid out like instapaper, at 15pts or above.

/surprising rant

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insulanian
I read much much more since I started reading on the phone. Width of the
average phone screen matches the width of the newspaper text column, which
makes it a very good size for reading. However, one has to be careful to
protect the eyes by reducing the screen brightness.

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ZeroGravitas
This is why I've been buying larger, AMOLED screen phones for a while. Ideal
for fitting in reading on the go and late at night, with pink text on true
black.

------
frik
The iPhone6 has the optimal screen resolution (4.6"), I wouldn't use a larger
phone (it wouldn't fit in pockets).

From my experience reading magazines is best on iPad and reading books (with
little photos) best on Kindle.

