My Cellphone As My E-Book Reader

I love my SmartPhone. Never mind that it sometimes freezes, and the user interface is a bit slow (it’s Windows-powered, that’s why!). Similar to how I dig simple, spartan phones that just do what a phone’s supposed to do, I also I love phones that I can hack with all my mods, patches and third-party apps.

Most especially, I love the fact that I can read e-books off my SmartPhone. I’m such a literature freak.

E-Book Reader

Why not get a real e-book reader, you say? Or, perhaps a real PDA with a large touch-screen interface? Why not buy hardcopy editions of the books, even?

I’m cool with that. But I’m the person who would rather travel with light pockets than have all sorts of gadgets and books I have to carry around just to make life bearable. I mean, I do love books (the smell and the touch of paper have some magical effects on lit buffs), but I can’t expect to be able to carry around my favorite paperback or hardbound just anywhere.

I want something I can just whip out from anywhere, anytime, without worries over fumbling up or having to use two (or three?) hands to read.

I Get Easily Bored

I read somewhere that we spend literally years of our lives waiting or lining up for something (aggregated, of course). We queue up at the bank. We wait for our turn at the doctor’s clinic. We spend hours at airport terminal lounges. We line up at the grocery counter. We spend some time daily commuting, in trains, ferries, cabs, or even our own cars.

Somehow I decided not to just let life leave me fluttering around doing nothing while waiting in queues. So I try to be productive while in otherwise potentially time-wasting situations. Of course, at times it’s better to get to converse with people you’re waiting in line or travelling with. Sometimes it’s good to just listen to music or podcasts (such as when driving, when you couldn’t possibly read). But when I’m alone I find tranquility amid the bustling happenings of the real world–I read.

Just to prepare for such situations, I load up my SmartPhone with all kinds of e-books imaginable, from Tolkien’s lore, to Twain’s classics, to Dumas’ adventure novels (you can find a lot of freebies over at Project Gutenberg). And for the copyrighted material? Let’s just say I feel quite comfortable with downloading e-copies of books which I already own hardcopies of.

The Drawbacks


“Nobody move! I’ve got a cellphone,
and I’m not afraid to use it!”

Mobile phones will be mobile phones. No matter how “smart” you call them, or how many PDA-features you stuff into them, they’ll always be mobile phones. And one disadvantage you get is in those cases where you just can’t use your mobile phone. There are places you’re either discouraged, or even prohibited–by law,even–from using your phone.

The bank

Take for instance the banks. In my city, there is a ban in effect against using mobile phones within bank premises. They claim that pulses from digital phones disrupt communications systems, and can sometimes cause transactions to fail (like ATM connections, card PIN-entry machines, and teller terminals).

However, the primary reason is for security against bank robbery. I think the bad guys are fond of communicating with each other by mobile or radio (like texting or calling to say “Get the getaway car ready; we’re about to announce the hold up.”). Or maybe they’re afraid of people with phone-cams surveying the bank’s internals (wait, why don’t they ban people with pens and paper instead?).

So how does this affect me? Murphy’s law says that you will get stuck in line whenever you’re in a hurry. And this is just the case with me whenever I visit the bank to deposit funds. I often find myself arguing with the bank security personnel that my phone’s on “Aircraft Mode,” and isn’t actually emitting any signal (it doesn’t even have a built-in camera). I’m just reading an e-book, for crying out loud!

Aircraft

Speaking of “aircraft mode,” there’s a reason SmartPhones were built with “aircraft” or “airplane” modes. It’s so you can power up the device without actually turning on the cellular radio, for those places where you can’t use cellphones. And there’s a reason it’s called “aircraft mode”–it’s generally intended for use while in-flight, for when you’re supposed to turn your cellphone off (until regulators say otherwise, that is).

Sadly, airline personnel and airport security have lost their humor in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedies. So aircraft security has been bumped up the past several years. Even with the integration of aircraft modes on many new mobiles, most airlines still completely ban the use of mobile devices, even when some are capable of “aircraft mode.”

Oh, Go Bore Me to Death!

So where does this leave people like us who like using our mobile phones to pass the time, such as by reading e-books, playing games, or fiddling around with the phone’s calendar and todo-list (can be a great getting-things-done tool if used properly)? I guess we’ll just have to contend with it for now. Or perhaps we can still use the “my cellphone isn’t exactly turned on” argument, short of our knees being rifled off by bank or airport security.

Or maybe we can live with it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Do we have a doctor on board? Passenger No. 57 seems to be dying of boredom.

June 27th, 2006 Posted by J. Angelo Racoma in Article at 10:35 am 1 Comment »
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1 Comment »

  1. [...] These days, the only handheld computing device I own is a Windows-powered SmartPhone, and I use it mainly as–of course–my phone for texting and calling, and as an e-book reader. The PIM functions? Well, I tried to maximize them, but that just didn’t cut it for me. These days I usually keep my schedules on Google Calendar and my tasks on a Google Desktop Gadget (which gets the task lists from Outlook, which is synced with my phone). [...]

    Pingback by Laptops vs. Subnotebooks vs. Handhelds - Laptops Blog — July 31, 2006 @ 4:36 am

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