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Cell Phone as e-Book Reader (in Japan)

Posted by timothy on from the doubles-as-a-vision-test dept.

aussie_a writes "Reading books on your cell phone has become the latest feature in Japan. With games, e-mails and the news already standard features, the Japanese cell-phone is more then just a phone. Novels are downloaded in segments and are run as Java-based applications on the phone. But users can do much more then just read the book, they are able to search for books, write reviews and send fan mail to the authors."

4 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Good For Scrolls by pressesc · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is how the story lead would appear on a cell phone. Is it good for anything but Haiku?

  2. To small? by vidarlo · · Score: 4, Informative
    Interesting discussion.

    I think that a mobile phone will have far to small screen. Even if you have a 7" screen, you can't display more than a few lines of text at once! A book has superior resolution, no expiry date, can lend it away and such. I see none of those features on a mobile phone.

    The day we can have a a5-sized sheet of e-paper, with a small 20g heavy data module, then maybe can e-books take off. But a book is something everyone know, it's universally, needs nothing but light, and works fine.

    --
    Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
    1. Re:To small? by FRiC · · Score: 2, Informative

      Reading e-books have been quite common in China and Japan for a long time. Unlike languages that have to be spelled out, Chinese characters take up much less space and don't have to be word wrapped or hyphenated. Having a small display isn't a problem at all.

  3. In Russia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Well, reading books off the cell phone became quite widespread in Russia, too. Especially, given the fact that there is a *tons* of russian books on the internet.

    Have a look at http://bookshelf.sourceforge.net/ if you need a book reader for your cell phone.