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Kobo for Android has been sitting at the bottom of the barrel in terms of eReading applications on the Android market, but that’s because their app was as closed as a dangerous manhole: it was difficult reading anything not bought from Kobo’s own store. An update to their application changes all of that , though, as they’ve made it even easier to find books, sideload them, and now support the standard ePub format. Here’s the list of changes in its entirety:
- The ability to search, add and read Internet Archive ePubs – that’s over 1.9 million eBooks!
- You can now read ebooks in the ePub format, no matter where they are purchased from
- All of the great reading features available for books from our catalogue are available on books added to the library
- We’ve made sideloading books easier and more customer friendly
Kobo doesn’t have a big name like Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, or even Sony (later in December) and Laputa to attract an overwhelming amount of traffic, but they’ll remain competitive regardless and that’s always what we like to see. Go ahead and find the updated version in the Android market now.
I am a big fan of Kobo… their android application sucked until a few weeks back but has improved a lot. They seem to be sticking to semi-regular updates that are (slowly) adding features. But the most important thing is that they are REALLY multi-platform you can read your books anywhere: web, desktop application (Windows, MacOSX and Ubuntu Linux!) and all the major smartphone OSs. Moreover, Kobo is actually sticking to open standards instead of developing yet another ebook format.
It is still not importing my ePub books. Not there yet…