Recommended Posts

Just received my Nexus and I'm loving it so far. My only grip is Google Books. I wish I had read more about it as I have found I can only view books purchased from Play and not import from outside of it. I tried Aldiko and it's ok, and if that's the best alternative, I'm not impressed. It has an unpolished interface, page turning lags (which is odd as there is no animation whatsoever), when I open a book it seems to automatically turn up the brightness to 11 and there are no options. For anything.

Any recommendations?

Edit: For me this is almost a deal breaker. My sister wanted a Nexus when I showed it to her and II might end up giving this up and waiting for the 7 inch iPad. At least iBooks can do what I need. Really hope Google Books does sooner than later.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1098277-book-reader-for-nexus-7/
Share on other sites

Of what format are the books you want to read?

I found Aldiko the best for epub's and ezPDF Reader of PDF's.

FBReader (epub) and Cool Reader (epub) are pretty fast, but have an even more unpolished interface and some minor formatting problems.

I went back and forth between Moon Reader and Aldiko. I'd say Moon Readeris better, but both seem to rape the battery. It doesn't really matter at this point and If I can't transfer the promotional credit to my sister it's going back. It's partly my fault for assuming I could import books. It's a shame because that was the reason I purchased it in the first place and everything else about this tablet is great.

Hello,

I have been using both the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook apps on my Google Nexus 7 tablet and haven't come across any major issues, but I am mostly reading content for those two particular services. There's also a native Adobe Acrobat Reader for PDF files, I believe, but I have not used that yet.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Try mantano reader premium, it's very smooth with PDFs.

Aldiko is unoptomized for PDFs but works well with epubs (and also has smooth page turning effects (for epubs only)). You can also change the brightness settings for it too so it doesn't blind you when you start it up.

Try mantano reader premium, it's very smooth with PDFs.

Aldiko is unoptomized for PDFs but works well with epubs (and also has smooth page turning effects (for epubs only)). You can also change the brightness settings for it too so it doesn't blind you when you start it up.

Yeah, I realized that there are options available only when you read a book. Thought that was a bit daft. I tried several other readers and thought Mantano was the best. They all pale in comparison to Google's native reader though, IMO.

  • 2 months later...

Hi

I've transferred a PDF from my laptop to my Nexus, installed Adobe Reader app onto Nexus and I'm reading my file.

1. Download Adobe Reader from Google Play - its free

2. Connect Nexus to your laptop or PC vis USB cable - you can try Wifi.

3. In My Computer go to the PDF that you want to transfer and right mouse click the file. In the list of options select 'Send to' which gives you another list of all the places you can send it too, the Nexus should be in the list - select it.

4. Disconnect the USB and open up Adobe Reader on your Nexus and select the file from the list of available books

Hope this helps

At some point they updated adobe reader on android and it became hella smooth. Not sure which app I'd use to read epub files though.

I would install google drive on a PC and on the tablet to sync stuff. When you open the files from google drive you should get the little pop up asking you which app to use.

I went back and forth between Moon Reader and Aldiko. I'd say Moon Readeris better, but both seem to rape the battery.

I recommend that you turn the option to execute a certain function on shaking the device, this may be the cause for consuming too much battery as it forces the accelerometer to remain active while reading all the time.

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

You can convert your books to AZW3 format and use the Amazon Kindle app. It works great and has one of the best reading experiences.

For converting your books try the site posted earlier: ebookconverter.net or use Calibre, which is a book manager/library. It can convert and transfer your books to the Nexus 7.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Simple answer is yes, you will still get the Windows updates and as long as browser is up to date, you will be good. Only thing secure boot does is protect you against boot level threats and make it harder to install other OS's. I've been looking into this pretty thoroughly lately myself as wifes computer has secure boot disabled plus my other, older computers that run Linux, don't have secure boot enabled. Have seen all kinds of questions about this on the Linux Mint and MX Linux forums. Just don't suddenly enable secure boot now.
    • How many other companies will follow Ford's lead? Or, have they already gotten lazy and become enslaved to AI--and now can't figure out how to get out of that mess.
    • Why would any self-respecting intelligent person follow any recommendation by Donald's GOP administration? With almost two years of fabrications, deceit, and blatantly illegal behavior, why believe them now? They had best be gone after the November 2026 election, so we'll wait and see.
    • AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      149
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!