App Review: Adobe Reader 2.5 for S60v5

Application review? In my blog? Yesterday I updated my Download! app to find this there. When I see that it’s published by Quickoffice I sighed and downloaded hoping it wasn’t paid. But alas, it is.

I’m gonna go with a pros and cons format here, plus linked screenshots:

• Pros:
  • Can render pdfs way faster then 1.5 on my N95.
  • Hires screen makes reading a doddle. (always wanted to use this word) Sample (screenshotting app wasn’t keen on getting a good landscape picture)
  • The canvas is drag and scroll (as in the browser) and at the same time it has scrollbars! So you can jump to the end or the middle of the page with accuracy on smaller documents. (that’s what I wanted on the web browser, maybe with transparent scroll bars)

• Cons:
  • Paid, lol.
  • Weird user interface inherited from Quickoffice. So it comes with quickmanager and friends.
  • Badly drawn toolbar buttons. (and what’s with that totally out of place blue icon?)
  • Not only aesthetics, the toolbar buttons make it hard to zoom as you can’t see easily which one is the +, which one is the – and which one is the ok button.
  • No page bookmarking. Kinda needed in my opinion.
  • No settings D: Adobe Reader 1.5 had default settings on opening a file, and this is the deal breaker for me here.

For example, looking at the options, to comfortably start reading my ebook, I have to: Open the app, confirm trial, select file, confirm trial (!), rotate screen, options>go to page, Options>View>Wrap text, Options>Zoom, Options>Full screen. And it must be done in that order or else it loses settings.

All could be solved by a simple preferences “on open, apply etc% zoom, etc rendering, etc window size”.

I was never the one to read stuff on my mobile, but now with a big screened one I kinda took interest. So right now I’ll wait to see what Pdf+ has in the store for 5th edition.