Quote:
Originally Posted by JeremyZ
To those of you who've got iPhone 4s, what can I expect from this in terms of an eReader? Is it usable, or is it just way too much scrolling? Can one zoom in on the text, or is one stuck with the whole page on a screen?
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I got my iPhone 4 last Friday so this is based on a week of usage.
The text quality is phenomenal; the Retina display makes this incredibly readable. Compared to my iPhone 3GS, I'm reading one font size smaller in iBooks and the Kindle app with no increase in eyestrain.
But it's still a 3.7" screen, so for reflowable text (Kindle/epub/etc), you are going to be changing pages more than you would on an actual Kindle or an iPad. Still, I find myself reading on my iPhone 4 more than I did on my 3GS (e.g. I don't switch to the iPad as quickly) because the screen is SO good.
For PDF, you are going to need to zoom in and pan around, or use a reader like GoodReader that can extract text. I'd say that it's okay as a PDF reader in a pinch but an iPad is a vastly better PDF reader simply because of the screen size.
One last comment on the screen: the new iPod Touch model DOES have a retina display (e.g. 326 dpi) but it's not the same IPS-based panel that the iPhone 4 has. From what I"ve read, this mostly means it's not as generous in the viewing angles it allows. I can't see this as being a major problem for reading, though.