Aldiko Updated – Now Optimized for Android Tablets

06.12.2011 Nate Hoffelder 12 Comments

My second favorite Android reading app was just updated today, and it’s worth a look.

Aldiko just posted a major update to their reading app. The new version is much better designed for a large screen tablet. Look at the screen shot at right and then try to picture it on a 10″ screen. The older v2.0 app was designed for small screens (5″ and under) and wasted a lot of screen real estate on 7″ screens and above.

The v2.1 release adds better support for OPDS. Have you ever downloaded ebooks from Feedbooks from inside an app? That’s going to get a little easier now. The new release also has better support for the right-click "open with" function, so you can select an Epub or PDF attached to an email, downloaded from a webpage, or in your DropBox account.

The general reading experience is the same. You still have all the formatting options you had before, which is part of the reason why I liked this app. I like my ebooks to look exactly one way and Aldiko can help me do that. It still as support for Adobe DE DRM, Epub, PDF, and it still has the Aldiko ebookstore. I prefer to get my ebooks elsewhere, but I have to admit having the ebookstore there is a nice backup.

The new release is currently available only as the paid app (I finally bought it) and it requires Android v2.1 and above. The free version will eventually be updated and so will the copy in the Amazon Appstore. And now that I have both the old and new version, I really think the new one is worth paying for just to get it sooner. It’s a lot nicer to use. But you should also pay for it just to support the developers.

BTW, Aldiko is not my favorite Android reading app any more. I’ve come to prefer CoolReader. It was put in front of me on a loaner tablet and it’s grown on me. You can find CoolReader on the project page or in the Android Market.

Aldiko (Android Market)

Comments

Sweetpea December 7, 2011 um 1:35 am

Does it finally have highlighting? Because the lack of that is why I de-installed it after 5 minutes of finding out it didn’t have it…

Nate Hoffelder December 7, 2011 um 1:42 am

No, not yet. That’s weird. I thought Aldiko had this already.

Logan Kennelly December 7, 2011 um 12:08 pm

Aldiko 1.0 had highlighting (as well as a few other features that were lost in the upgrade to 2.0), so your memory is correct. Now we simply have the ability to Share; in my case, I Share text into my note-taking application and this ends up being sufficient for my use, but not ideal.

Eric April 25, 2012 um 4:21 pm

Hi Logan, what note taking application do you use. I want to achieve the same but cannot share to any of the note taking applications I have installed.

Regards

Logan Kennelly April 25, 2012 um 7:26 pm

I use Catch notes (catch.com). I haven’t compared it to Evernote, mainly because I haven’t run into issues with Catch.

When I Share from Aldiko to Catch, I usually add a tag (just text, similar to Twitter) like "#liars". Then I can later look at all "#liars" notes to see what I’ve written about _Liars & Outliers_. As I said, it works, but an integrated solution would be better.

Logan Kennelly December 7, 2011 um 1:40 am

I still use Aldiko because it is the best reader if you want your books rendered properly (for fiction, this generally doesn’t matter). It is also one of the few readers that allows you to pin books to your home screen as if they were applications. The update is mostly the same, but it is much, much faster to start reading a long, complicated book now.

I am really impressed with CoolReader, as well. It happens to be one of the few applications that supports collapsible multi-level table-of-contents, and the presentation options are awesome. It is really hard to nit pick CoolReader because it also happens to be open source.

Sweetpea December 7, 2011 um 6:03 am

Yes, it’s a great application. But the lack of highlighting makes it useless for me.

And I tried CoolReader. And I will nit pick if I want to! It turns UP my backlight when I go in night mode… Which makes it impossible to use when reading in bed at night.

Harvey February 25, 2012 um 3:07 pm

You can swipe your finger up and down on the left side of the screen to adjust screen brightness while reading.

Lizzie December 7, 2011 um 8:29 am

I am a huge Aldiko fan, haven’t looked at coolreader yet.
Good news on the update as I am getting a tablet for Christmas.

Lynne Connolly December 7, 2011 um 1:05 pm

I uninstalled Aldiko because it doesn’t have highlighting, note-taking or bookmarking, and because it doesn’t render text properly – no italics! You can tell it to go to publisher defaults but then the fonts are horrible and it will only scroll, not flip.

I’m with you on Cool Reader. I really like it and it’s my second favorite on Android. proper rendering, nice note taking.

My first is Mantano. Note-taking, add your own fonts, proper rendering, italics and all, and the library function is fantastic. You can have your own Collections, like on the Kindle, and there are several views. Mantano is now available in a free version, ad supported, but they’re only on the home page, not in the books.