After my initial look at Adobe Reader 2.5, it became apparent that a comparison to the established third party offering Pdf+ was needed. And so, I give you a three way comparison, Adobe Reader 1.5 versus Adobe Reader 2.5 versus Pdf+ 1.68. Summary: this one's almost too close to call - but I called it anyway.
Read on in the full article.
Last night, I was using PDF+ to view a straight-forward all-text pdf which I had downloaded on my phone. I was waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... and finally the page rendered. But I couldn't read the text - too small. So I increased the zoom size. And I waited ... and waited ... and waited. So much so, that I gave up in frustration.
I got to thinking: why can't there be an option in PDF readers that just extracts the PDF's text and displays it in a simple text display. Forget about faithful rendering of the original document. I just want to read the contents. This would just be an additional option, for quick reading of pdf text.
Does any pdf program do this right now? If not, I might write my own 😉
Best regards,
Malcolm
www.freepoc.org
I'm sorry but I just have to be negative here...PDF is the biggest pile of s**t on the net and the sooner people stop using it the better, encouraging it's use by giving it a presence on mobiles is a huge step backwards.
Pdf+ can handle much bigger files than Adobe Reader. You should have tested that important factor too. 😊
Hi Steve, thanks for the reviews - could you please mention that Pdf+ (v1.69) is free on UIQ3 devices? I know all I ever seem to do is moan about the S60 bias but you keep slipping back there - yours is a SYMBIAN site after all 😊.
With regards to the actual comparisons, personally I find the quick page scrolling means PDF+ wins the day - I find I want to chuck my E61 out of the window waiting for it to redraw. In fact I only use my P1 for this now.
ok, Paddy, "Pdf+ is free on UIQ...." oh, you've already done it!
It's a sad fact that UIQ does keep slipping from our minds - it's very hard to keep it in the foreground because there are comparatively less UIQ 3 launches, less UIQ 3 news, far less UIQ 3 users and bloggers etc.
Sony Ericsson could be a LOT better at both official PR and the sort of word of mouth marketing that Nokia seems so excellent at. And Motorola seems just as bad so far....
On the plus side, Rafe uses a P1i most days now and there will probably be loads of UIQ 3 stuff coming out of the Smartphone Show in two weeks time.
(I'm looking forward to doing an informal device poll at the pub meet - that should be fun!)
Steve
yeah, latest weeks have been of total s60 domination on AAS...but i agree SE does have fault in this...they are not doing what they should with UIQ...Nokia is doing it right
I hope it improves soon though...you guys should give some hints to them at the Smartphone Show
I have a P1 now, and i agree its really a great product, its what the P990 should have been
How do the two commercial options cope with a document such as this one?
It's a two-page brochure with lots of colour imagery and small text, and is typical of documents which I would like to be able to read in the field. The LE 1.5 version is unable to handle it on my E61. I had assumed that the 'out of memory' errors were actually accurate, so it was quite interesting to read that the same errors occur on an E90. It chokes on quite a few documents which I would really like it to handle. Too bad nobody has ported QPdf from the Linux-based Sharp Zaurus to Symbian...
One other comment. Apparently, many S60 devices must include the LE 1.5 reader in their ROM images, but it is a separate app for all of the S60 devices which I have been able to get my hands on thus far (E61 and 6682).
What about reflows? That should be the sticking point for a low-res phone. PDF+ has the horrible font rendering issue and Adobe only supports pre-processed reflow documents.