Reading .mobi ebooks on Android

March 11, 2011 4:47 PM

Can an ebook in .mobi format be transferred to and read on either Amazon's Kindle for Android app or Google's ebook reader? Neither seems to have an "open" command.
posted by davcoo to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Best answer: I have an iPhone, and in my universe I needed to download Stanza and add the ebook file to Stanza to be able to read it (rather than through the Kindle app). You might need a different ebook reader to be able to read a non-Amazon ebook. You can use Callibri (free) to convert the ebook file format to any other ebook file format.

I don't know anything about the Google ebook reader, but this might be helpful.
posted by clone boulevard at 5:01 PM on March 11, 2011

Amazon gives you the ability to do this with an actual Kindle device, but as far as I can tell, doesn't allow it with the Kindle app. It's one of the more frustrating lacking features.
posted by duien at 5:02 PM on March 11, 2011

Ugh, Calibre, sorry!
posted by clone boulevard at 5:03 PM on March 11, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for all the suggestions. It looks like iReader may be what I was looking for. Wish Amazon and Google would make their apps more generic.
posted by davcoo at 5:35 PM on March 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Try double-clicking on your mobi file, or just dropping it in to the running Kindle app.

That works with the Windows app but I was looking for a solution for an Android smartphone.
posted by davcoo at 6:40 PM on March 11, 2011

Best answer: I don't know about the Google ebooks, but for the Kindle android app, I think you can just drop the mobi files into the Kindle folder on the phone. This webpage showed me how to do it.

I know I've got a number of drm free mobi files on my Android and read them just fine with the Kindle app. Thing to remember is these will not sync with your real Kindle or your other devices as far as remembering where you were reading or your notes, only the official Amazon books will do that.
posted by teleri025 at 7:04 PM on March 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

I believe (though I'm not at all certain) if you email the file to your kindle email address (assuming you have one- it'll be [e-mail] or [e-mail]), it'll sync to your android phone. I'm not 100% sure if this works if you don't have a kindle itself.
posted by JMOZ at 6:21 AM on March 12, 2011

JMOZ, I think that only works with Amazon books. Emailing personal documents (i.e., anything you didn't buy from amazon or download from the kindle store) only works for the Kindle device itself. Those personal documents only live on your device (unless you back them up to something else.)

The way the syncing across devices works is that the Kindle ebook (azw file) lives on the "cloud" and then when each of your devices accesses that file, it pushes information about bookmarks, notes, and current read location to the cloud and the file associated with you.

If you turn your wifi off, Kindle don't sync. If you are on Kindle app with no wifi on your computer or phone, Kindle don't sync. If you are reading a word document of your dissertation, kindle won't sync.

It's not intuitive to get non-amazon purchased book onto a kindle or kindle app, mainly because they want you to buy things from them. But you can do it if you are determined.
posted by teleri025 at 8:40 AM on March 12, 2011