MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - How to read e-books on (almost) any phone

mogui · 09-29-2007, 11:04 PM

I think having a few books on my phone is a good thing. I always have my phone with me, so whenever I am on hold somewhere, I can continue reading something I like. In an earlier post I reported some success with my Moto V186. But the screen is a tiny 128x128. I really wanted something larger.

I found a phone by gaoxinqi the seems right. I checked out the manufacturer. They sound legit and they are willing to put their name on
their product and guarantee it for a year. The shop where I bought it is substantial too, just in case I have problems. The price was right. After my wife bargained with them, I paid US$233.

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The manufacturer often brands other products (MP3, MP4 players) as GXQ. This model is NT6306. It has a quarter VGA screen that is 3.2 inches diagonally. This resolution is common to pocket PCs. The screen size of this device is marginally smaller than a pocket PC but larger than a typical Treo.

The internal memory is about 40M while the micro SD card (T-Flash) that came with it is 512M. It can take a card up to 1G. It has Bluetooth. I think the operating system is Symbian. The executables are not visible in the file system. It has two cameras, one facing away and one facing the operator. It takes 640x480 photos. So far the camera performs well. I have not tried taking a video yet. The phone can use 2 SIM cards. Of course it is unlocked.

The PDA features are what you would expect from a PDA, address book, todo list, notes, games and a few utilities like conversion and a calculator and such. The input method can be English or Chinese. You can select the language: English or simplified (mainland) Chinese.

This smartphone has rich multimedia features, a good media player and MP3 player. It has a speaker on the back that can be quite loud. The fidelity is OK. I have not tried the earplugs yet. Watching movies in the car is OK. The player will go full screen. I found an application on the device that will run on the PC and format videos to fit the device.

The phone is all set up for internet browsing. I will get the GPRS turned on today and try it out. To connect to the PC you just plug in the USB cable and the phone looks like two external hard drives to the PC. I have not tried Bluetooth yet.

But you are all waiting for me to describe the eReader, so here it is. There is a reader application under Multimedia. When I first got the phone there were no eBooks on it, so That was the first thing I loaded onto it after I connected it to my PC. But they didn't show up in the eBook list! Then I thought maybe the OS didn't like spaces in the filenames. I fixed that and voila, they appeared!

But the eReader is one of the really dumb Chinese kind. Chinese writing is all run together; no spaces. So Chinese software engineers think English should be the same way -- no word wrap! Very ugly.

So it was back to formatting each file for line length. I have a utility that will convert a whole directory at a time so that was the work of a few minutes. I loaded the books back on the device. They looked fine. But there was another problem. The books were cut off after about 4 pages! How strange!

Now I am researching the OS. I need to confirm that it is Symbian. I will have one of my ladies call the factory today and find out what I can do. There are readers available for every operating system out there. I will confirm that the phone will run J2ME. There are half a dozen reading solutions in Java.

All-in-all I like the phone. But, of course I am a gadget freak. Stay tuned for futher discoveries.

09-29-2007, 11:04 PM	#11
mogui eNigma Posts: 503 Karma: 1335 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: The Philippines Device: HTC G1 Android FBReader	Cheap Chinese smartphone GXQ NT6306 I think having a few books on my phone is a good thing. I always have my phone with me, so whenever I am on hold somewhere, I can continue reading something I like. In an earlier post I reported some success with my Moto V186. But the screen is a tiny 128x128. I really wanted something larger. I found a phone by gaoxinqi the seems right. I checked out the manufacturer. They sound legit and they are willing to put their name on their product and guarantee it for a year. The shop where I bought it is substantial too, just in case I have problems. The price was right. After my wife bargained with them, I paid US$233. The manufacturer often brands other products (MP3, MP4 players) as GXQ. This model is NT6306. It has a quarter VGA screen that is 3.2 inches diagonally. This resolution is common to pocket PCs. The screen size of this device is marginally smaller than a pocket PC but larger than a typical Treo. The internal memory is about 40M while the micro SD card (T-Flash) that came with it is 512M. It can take a card up to 1G. It has Bluetooth. I think the operating system is Symbian. The executables are not visible in the file system. It has two cameras, one facing away and one facing the operator. It takes 640x480 photos. So far the camera performs well. I have not tried taking a video yet. The phone can use 2 SIM cards. Of course it is unlocked. The PDA features are what you would expect from a PDA, address book, todo list, notes, games and a few utilities like conversion and a calculator and such. The input method can be English or Chinese. You can select the language: English or simplified (mainland) Chinese. This smartphone has rich multimedia features, a good media player and MP3 player. It has a speaker on the back that can be quite loud. The fidelity is OK. I have not tried the earplugs yet. Watching movies in the car is OK. The player will go full screen. I found an application on the device that will run on the PC and format videos to fit the device. The phone is all set up for internet browsing. I will get the GPRS turned on today and try it out. To connect to the PC you just plug in the USB cable and the phone looks like two external hard drives to the PC. I have not tried Bluetooth yet. But you are all waiting for me to describe the eReader, so here it is. There is a reader application under Multimedia. When I first got the phone there were no eBooks on it, so That was the first thing I loaded onto it after I connected it to my PC. But they didn't show up in the eBook list! Then I thought maybe the OS didn't like spaces in the filenames. I fixed that and voila, they appeared! But the eReader is one of the really dumb Chinese kind. Chinese writing is all run together; no spaces. So Chinese software engineers think English should be the same way -- no word wrap! Very ugly. So it was back to formatting each file for line length. I have a utility that will convert a whole directory at a time so that was the work of a few minutes. I loaded the books back on the device. They looked fine. But there was another problem. The books were cut off after about 4 pages! How strange! Now I am researching the OS. I need to confirm that it is Symbian. I will have one of my ladies call the factory today and find out what I can do. There are readers available for every operating system out there. I will confirm that the phone will run J2ME. There are half a dozen reading solutions in Java. All-in-all I like the phone. But, of course I am a gadget freak. Stay tuned for futher discoveries. Last edited by mogui; 09-29-2007 at 11:08 PM.