Adobe Reader for Android Released
If you have used the words “Adobe” and “Android” in the same sentence in the past month, you have no doubt been talking about their work to get Flash onto smartphones as part of Android 2.2. But in all of the ensuing chaos, let’s not forget that Adobe also makes several other very useful products that have little to do with Flash, including the great PDF viewing experience that is Adobe Reader. Potentially lost in the mire of Flash 10.1 announcements is quite the little gem: Adobe has released Reader for Android.
What Reader delivers is a hands-down great PDF viewing experience on a mobile device. You get many features you just couldn’t go without including auto reorientation of the screen for portrait and landscape modes and pinch-to-zoom, but Adobe adds in a few other cool features such as a text “reflow” mode that will reformat documents containing large amounts of text for better mobile viewing. Check it all out in Adobe’s demo video at their announcement blog.
So far I’m impressed. I don’t do a lot of PDF viewing on my phone, and haven’t explored many viewer options, but I had been using Beam Reader up until this point. For a lightweight and superbly functional experience I will definitely be using Reader as my default choice from now on. (Before you go complaining that you can’t find it in the Market, Adobe Reader is currently only available for the Nexus One and Motorola Droid/Milestone, and apparently though Adobe didn’t say so, it will work on the Droid Incredible too.)
