Nokia Reading: Closer Look at News Stream and Sideloading E-Books

I know we covered the update to the latest version of Nokia Reading yesterday; but for a book-worm like me it’s definitely worth a second closer look. I was only able to get the latest version of Nokia Reading earlier today, as the update wasn’t showing up for me last night; but after a re-install, reboot and a 12 Hour wait I was able to download it (UK marketplace). The initial interface of the app hasn’t changed much still offering the great Metro experience of separating the Book store from your shelf, while keeping them within reach (Personally I think Metro-or whatever it’s called now- is great for organizing large apps, as each “pane” can act as a app on it’s own).

The main update to Nokia Reading (now V1.4 previously 1.2) is the inclusion of the beautiful RSS reader dubbed “News Stream”, the reader itself carries on the live tile look (mimicking your Phone theme color) with multiple sized tiles and updating stories (WP8 influenced?).  News Stream comes preloaded with several news “bundles” for you to choose from including Regional news (depending on Marketplace), World News, Sports, Technology, Business, People… and many more; as well as the option to create your own News Stream. When making a new stream simply search for whatever topic intrigues you and the app will automatically load a list of suggested links (you can choose 4 news sources per stream). You can also pin any stream you want to your home screen where it will update automatically (over WiFi by default, 3G optional) so that you can keep in touch with the world at all times (News stream tile is the one covered by our awesome watermark).

The other major feature in this update is the ability to sideload any book stored on your Skydrive account and download it onto Nokia reading (Provided it’s DRM free and either .epub or .PDF format); I was a bit lost at first as there was no obvious option to link your skydrive account under settings, but to do so simply head to My Books–>More–> and hit the “skydrive download” button. After that it’s smooth sailing where I was able to retrieve multiple books in both PDF and epub format, but either my files don’t have the cover metadata or the app doesn’t support that yet; but not a major issue either way.

Two features I’d like to see in upcoming versions is a deeper integration of accounts between Nokia services (Nokia music, Reading and Maps all use the same login; maybe we;ll see an option to use the credit from Nokia music in the book store?); the other feature would be the ability to add custom links to the News Stream, I wasn’t able to find MyNokiablog under the “nokia” category so a manual input would greatly help (or if they could add a MNB feed we’d be very grateful).

Go ahead and scan the QR code below to get the app, and happy reading (feel free to suggest a good book down below!):

Category: Nokia