Your iPhone offers you a world of free eBooks with some slick eBook applications in the iTunes App Store. When it comes to reading books on your phone, the advertising is true, there really is an app for that....
Of the eBook applications for iPhone we looked at, we were surprised by their quality and fidelity.
We haven’t actually finished reading our first novel on the iPhone, but we are half way through, and we’re blown away by the experience. If you don’t already have one of these next generation smart-phones like the
iPhone, the
HTC Magic (powered by Google Android) or others like the
Nokia N97, then seeing is believing.
There are literally thousands of great applications (including eBook applications) that blow you away. Mobile phones from 3 years ago now look useless bricks compared to these new phones, made most apparent by the variety of brilliant applications you add to the phone for free, or for a couple of dollars. These eBook applications really deliver. What we loved was the page turning with your finger or the automatic scrolling which meant we didn’t need to touch the phone or screen to read a whole chapter.
Here are the 3 eBook readers that we looked at...
Stanza
eReader
Stanza (free)
Moby Dick, Dracula, 20,000 Leagues, Alice in Wonderland. Stanza is a well rounded eBook reader for the iPhone. It's free and has hundreds of free classics to download and read. We downloaded 1984 from George Orwell and started to read. Just flick your finger across the page to turn the pages. We also grabbed Moby Dick, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland. Another great with Stanza is that you can import your own eBooks and RTF files / PDFs.
StanzaeReader (free)
eReader also gives you access to thousands of free classics to start reading. We loved the scrolling Feature of eReader which let us hold the phone whilst the content of the book scrolled smoothly on the phone. It took a few pages before we got the speed right for our eyes, but once we did, it became very easy to read a lot of content.
eReader
iFlow / Beam it Down (free)
The ‘beam it down’ software was the most fun that we had when reading on the iPhone. The coolest feature is a 'tilt to scroll' function which lets you tilt the phone away from you and the text on the page starts scrolling at a pace equivalent to the angle of the tilt. We really got used to this quickly and would love to read all the content that we get on the iphone (emails etc.) in this way. To find this in the app store, we just searched under iFlow and a range of titles were linked and we just picked on of the titles.
iFlowOthers
Free Textbooks
A number of major publishers have grouped together through a venture called
CourseSmart which offers free textbooks for the iPhone from publishers like Pearson and McGraw-Hill (not available in Australia).
Kindle
Amazon have released a
Kindle App which syncs your Amazon Kindle books with your Kindle eReading device and offers a massive range of Amazon eBooks for download. Expect this to be available in Australia when the Kindle launches here (not available in Australia).
Getting an iPhone
To get yourself an iPhone, we've listed the most popular plans below.
Compare them all here to get the best plan for you.
Happy reading.
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1)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$0 upfront on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
The Works iPhone Plan
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$99 per month
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Minimum total cost: 2326.00000
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Included value: 3,000 mins
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Included data: 3 GB
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Data plans: 500MB, 1GB, 3GB
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2)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$0 upfront on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$100 'Phone' Plan
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$100 per month
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Minimum total cost: 2400.00000
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Included value: $90
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Included data: 5 MB
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Data plans: 5MB, 150MB, 300MB, 1GB, 5GB, 9GB
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3)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$0 upfront on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$129 Cap Plan
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$129 per month
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Minimum total cost: 3096.00000
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Included value: $700
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Data plans: 5MB, 150MB, 300MB, 1GB, 5GB, 9GB
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4)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$0 upfront on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$129 Unlimited Cap for iPhone
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$129 per month
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Minimum total cost: 1548.00000
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Included value: Unlimited*
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Included data: 4 GB
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Data plans: 0MB, 50MB, 250MB, 1GB, 3GB
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5)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$0 upfront on this plan
-
New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$150 'Phone' Plan
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$150 per month
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Minimum total cost: 3600.00000
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Included value: $135
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Included data: 7 MB
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Data plans: 5MB, 150MB, 300MB, 1GB, 5GB, 9GB
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6)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$0 upfront on this plan
-
New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$250 'Phone' Plan
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$250 per month
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Minimum total cost: 6000.00000
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Included value: $235
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Included data: 7 MB
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Data plans: 5MB, 150MB, 300MB, 1GB, 5GB, 9GB
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7)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$199.00 on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$30 'Phone' Plan
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$30 per month
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Minimum total cost: 720.00000
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Included value: $25
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Included data: 2 MB
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Data plans: 5MB, 150MB, 300MB, 1GB, 5GB, 9GB
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8)
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$5.00 per month on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$39 iPhone Cap
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$39 per month
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Minimum total cost: 936.00000
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Included value: $150
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Included data: 150 MB
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Data plans: 500MB, 1GB, 3GB
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9)
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+
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Apple iPhone 8GB
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$99.00 on this plan
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New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
-
GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$40 'Phone' Plan
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$40 per month
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Minimum total cost: 960.00000
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Included value: $35
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Included data: 2 MB
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Data plans: 5MB, 150MB, 300MB, 1GB, 5GB, 9GB
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10)
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+
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Apple iPhone 8GB
-
$0 upfront on this plan
-
New iPhone 3GS 16GB and iPhone 3GS 32GB models also available.
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Internal memory: 8GB
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High Speed HSDPA Connection
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GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, UMTS 850, UMTS 2100
$49 Cap Contract for iPhone
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$49 per month
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Minimum total cost: 1126.00000
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Included value: $300
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Included data: 300 MB
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Data plans: 0MB, 50MB, 250MB, 1GB, 3GB
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Compare all mobile phones and mobile plans
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