Yesterday OverDrive announced updated iPhone and Android apps to add support for ebooks borrowed from libraries.
The apps previously only supported MP3 audiobooks from libraries, but now you can download and read ebooks on Android devices and iPhone and iPod touches. The iPhone app works on the iPad as well, but isn’t optimized for it; they are working on an iPad specific app, as well as apps for BlackBerry and other devices.
I tested the Android app on the PocketBook IQ and it works great. The coolest thing about it is that you don’t have to use Adobe Digital Editions to transfer the ebooks like you have to with other devices; you simply browse through your library’s ebooks and then download them directly to your device to start reading.
If you haven’t gotten set up with OverDrive yet for borrowing library ebooks and audiobooks, check this earlier post on getting ebooks from libraries using OverDrive.
Using the OverDrive apps, there are options for adjusting brightness, adjusting text size (7 settings), font type (3 settings), and adding bookmarks. There’s a table of contents, a reading progress bar, night mode, and you can turn on and off the default CSS layout.
Some additional features are supposed to be added to the apps in a future release to include highlighting, annotation, text-to-speech, and other enhancements.
The OverDrive apps also allow you to setup a list of places to “Get eBooks” so that you can find more libraries and add them to the list and quickly start browsing for ebooks and audiobooks.
Overall, the new OverDrive apps get a big thumbs up. Visit the OverDrive software page to download them. They even have the raw APK file for downloading to Android devices that don’t have Market access.
I tried it out yesterday with an EPUB I downloaded from Guttenberg and with another self-created EPUB of mine.
I like the way it rendered the images and headings, which are sometimes problem areas. I also like the fact that if picks up on the cover image from within the EPUB and displays it in the bookshelf (Neither Aldiko or FBReader appear to do this). However, I don’t like the lack of settings for margins. Nonetheless, it is a good start for them.
One thing unique about Aldiko that I have noticed is that if I press my finger on an image, it gives me an option to open the image using a couple of a image viewer apps I have installed.
One thing unique about FBReader is it has collapsible TOCs, which is nice when your table of contents have multiple levels.
I agree about the margins. The ebook I downloaded from the library was actually good in that department, but a lot of ebooks (Adobe EPUBs especially) have annoyingly large or small margins. I hate it when apps and ereaders don’t allow you to adjust them.