Recommend a cell phone I can use to read plain text documents?

April 4, 2009 7:05 PM

Can anyone recommend a not too expensive cell phone I can use to also read Gutenberg texts?

My Palm Z22 PDA and my cell phone seem to be expiring simultaneously. I use the PDA mainly to read books in plain text from Gutenberg and similar sources and it's been great for carrying around a small library of books to read in odd moments. Instead of buying 2 new gadgets, does anyone have experience with one which isn't terribly expensive and can perform both functions? I don't need a camera or other bells and whistles.

Thanks!

posted by cdc to technology (4 comments total)

I'd say a large, high DPI screen is almost requisite for reading of any kind. I think that's going to leave you with only rather expensive options. For reference when making comparisons, the iPhone is 160 dpi.
posted by floam at 8:18 PM on April 4

s/reading/extended reading/
posted by floam at 8:18 PM on April 4

Treo 680. Get 'em used on ebay for $70 on up.
posted by saysthis at 11:22 PM on April 4

I have read a lot of books on my phone. At least a lot for my personal reading habits. I can hardly imagine facing a long wait without my trusty pocket library at this point.

In my opinion, screen size has very little relevance. You'll just page down more often. Nobody complains of newspaper columns and that is pretty much what it looks like on the phone. I got a Sony-Ericsson Z610i and before i had done it on an even older and worse Motorola. The technical detail you must look out for is that you can upload your own java games to it. Then you can google tequilacat's ebook reader (you may end up at a russian website, that is correct but it has an english version). This software will take any txt or html file you feed it and make a "java game" out of it that displays the text and allows you to scroll. It always remembers where you left off, no matter how you turn off the phone.

The edonkey network has significant ebook collections.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 4:15 AM on April 5