Reading a book on the Nokia Lumia 920

by Volker Weber

This week I have been reading a Lee Child book on my Lumia 920. The experience has been rather pleasant. I did not expect that.

I am a Kindle user. I love the black & white epaper display. And the Kindle travels with me, whereever I go. But last week, I wanted to leave it behind, because I was about to use Nokia's eBook application. It gives you access to the Nokia store where you can buy books crippled with Nokia's DRM scheme. That used do be the exclusive road to reading content on the Lumias. Then Nokia changed their minds and you can sideload epub files through your Microsoft SkyDrive account.

The Lumia 920 has a large screen with a resolution beyond what my Kindle provides: 1280 x 768 pixels. That is plenty enough for a crisp display that lets you read without falling asleep. You can select any of five font sizes, it lets you lock the screen rotation so you can read on the side (this should be a system wide setting), and you can have either black on white or white on black. Click through and zoom in with the loupe to see how crisp the display is.

There is one catch: if you read on a Kindle you never worry about your battery. It just last a month or more. Different on the Lumia. The phone never goes to sleep and the gorgeous display needs a lot of juice. The Lumia turned quite warm and I had to eventually plug it in. I tried both black on white, and then white on black, but that did not seem to make much of a difference.

That's only an issue if you read four hours straight. If you just read short pieces on the bus, it should not make much of a difference. In my case however, four hours is short. I can read 16 hours in one go, which usually means I read each book in one session. The Lumia does not have enough juice for that.

2012-11-18 :: email :: twitter :: facebook :: google+

Comments

American readers don't bother looking - Nokia Reading is not available in the US....

Max Nierbauer, 2012-11-18 14:28

Volker, is there an advantage over the (fixed) Amazon Kindle Windows Phone App regarding how reading works?
Sideloading, obviously, is one.

Hubert Stettner, 2012-11-18 18:59

Does Nokia ebooks really use Adobe DRM? I tried to load a epub-ebook in nokia ebooks, that uses Adobe Digital Editions DRM, but it did not work.

Christian Just, 2012-11-18 23:16

Christian, no. I wrote Adobe where I meant Nokia. The books are not tied to an Adobe ID but to your Nokia ID. Both use the technology from Overdrive though.

Sideloading, yes. And I prefer the font.

Volker Weber, 2012-11-18 23:25

Thanks for the information. For sideloading, does it mean you simply copy the *.MOBI file into the Lumia 920 through Skydrive? How does the Kindle app on the 920 know where to retrieve the file? I know that the Kindle app on older Windows Phone systems was unable to access the Skydrive.

Mark Philip, 2012-12-04 06:28

I am not talking about Kindle. This is Nokia Reading (Nokia eBooks in Germany). Yes, you put the file on Skydrive and side load it from there. It has to be a standard epub file, but that can be created from mobi.

Volker Weber, 2012-12-04 08:44

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