Freeware: Mobipocket eBook reader for S60, 3rd and 5th edition (Great for the Nokia N97)

You may be aware of this app already – this is just a highlight for those who haven’t come across it yet.

• to download go to m.mobipocket.com on your browser (select S60 3rd edition) or Click here and then send the .sis file to your phone.

One of my favourite applications on my N82 was the Mobipocket reader, MobiReader, an excellent free eBook reader for S60 phones – and with the N97’s 3.5″ 640×360 screen – it looks even better!

Library View

It’s such a feature packed application:

With the current S60 3rd edition, release (same file compatible mostly with S60 5th) you could:

• resume each document at the exact section you left it
• search/copy things within the document
• add bookmarks, after which opening the annotations will bring you directly to that section
• Highlight portions of text/add notes/links and even modify the text.
• Select page numbers to view
• Read with autoscrolling
• change a whole banquet of settings; colour of text/background/highlight/items modified – change font sizes /margins/line spacing and more.
• Supports images

What I love best about the Mobipocket format on S60 phones is that formatting is that whatever I set the font sizes to, be it a tiny size 7 or a very large size 19, the pages automatically the amount of words in a window so that you NEVER have to scroll left or right as you would if you were viewing a PDF file. Even if you set it not to view in full screen, or change from landscape to portrait, Mobipocket reader adjusts accordingly. Mobipocket ignores the original document’s page numbers and page formatting making it absolutely perfect for reading on a mobile device.

Size 7. Scroll bar at bottom fills up as you go along the book. At smaller fonts, you will have less pages.

Size 19. Dynamic "zooming"

Size 7 (portrait)

This makes it such a joy to read on a Mobile device – as often, zooming to a point where text is comfortable in Acrobat reader means having to continuously scroll from left to right with each line. The other option was to decrease the font size to reduce the need for horizontal scrolling, but that meant the text was uncomfortably small.

Although MobiReader’s compatible with S60 5th edition (You can use touch to navigate through your library/options/settings), you cannot navigate between pages with touch/select text. On S60 5th edition, you have to use either the volume keys (which is actually a decent enough solution) or the D-Pad/ space/enter button on the Nokia N97. Delete button on the N97 is the only way to exit the document and return to the library if you go full screen (how do 5800/5530 users manage this?)

Selection was quite random

You can’t do much of the “selection mode”functions (highlight/copy/add note/look up) and the ability to do this disappears completely when you’re viewing in full screen.

Only adding a bookmark works. We can only hope that there’ll be some optimizations for S60 5th edition to bring it to the same functionality as found on 3rd edition.

Lack of 3rd edition functions maybe understandable given that it doesn’t seem to be officially supported for S60 5th edition (no 5th edition devices are listed as compatible in the downloads section.

Regardless of the lack of additional “selection mode” functions and some odd behaviour when going into fullscreen (in S60 5th edition), as a tool for making eBooks easier to read on a phone, MobiReader is absolutely great. On S60 3rd edition devices like the N86/E75 – MobiReader is fantastic and you should try it out if you’re not a user already. Hey, it’s free. 🙂

Update: Akademy has found some great qwerty shortcuts for the N97:

Thought you might like some key combos for N97 though.
‘j’ switches between fullscreen (I couldn’t see another way out),
‘right’, ’space’ ,’return’ go to next page,
‘left’ goes back a page,
‘3′ goes back to the beginning of the book (quite annoying when you’re half way through…)
‘2′ is something to do with annotations…
‘1′ or ‘delete’ go to the book select page
‘8′ goes to settings.

To download MobiReader, either go to

• m.mobipocket.com on your browser (select S60 3rd edition)
• Click here and then send to your phone.

Oh yeah, this may sound blindingly obvious but Mobipocket requires documents to be in the Mobipocket format.  You can get content via:

• the eBook store from Mobireader
• Mobipocket compatible catalogue sites such as Project Gutenburg
• Or simply convert your existing files via the mobipocket creator.

Mobipocket Creator

To download Mobipocket Creator, click here. <<It’s free too.

It converts HTML, Word Documents, Text documents and PDFs – all into the mobile friendly Mobipocket format.

It’s very quick and easy – drag and drop your file, click build (select no compression), open the newly made folder for your file, then send to your phone.

If you send Mobipocket files via bluetooth, once you open them from your inbox, MobiReader opens it and creates another copy in the Mass Memory “eBook” folder. Nice touch.

Tags: 3rd edition, 5th Edition, Applications, Downloads, E71, Eseries, Free, Freebie, Freeware, Mobipocket, Mobipocket Creator, MobiReader, N97, Nokia, Nokia 5800, Nokia E75, Nokia n86, Nokia N97, Nseries, Review, S60, Symbian, Xpress Music

Category: 3rd edition, 5th Edition, Freeware, Nokia, Nseries, Reviews, S60, Symbian