This article was published on February 6, 2013

Readmill rolls out a new e-reader app for iPhone, letting you sync books between devices


Readmill rolls out a new e-reader app for iPhone, letting you sync books between devices

Digital reading platform Readmill has finally optimized its app for iPhone and iPod touch, almost a year-and-a-half after it first launched for iPad.

We first covered Readmill way back in 2011, noting that it made e-books more social with a beautiful Last.fm-style app for reading.

The Berlin-based startup then expanded its platform with a slew of new cloud-based features for both sellers and consumers last summer, while simultaneously raising a Series A funding round, before going on to add support for Adobe DRM and PDF.

Now that it’s arrived on smaller-screen iOS devices, this will help open up the service not only to many more users, but also increase use amongst existing users, for those who don’t like to carry their iPad everywhere with them.

Indeed, similar to other popular reading services such as Kindle, Readmill synchronizes the reading experience across devices, meaning you can pick up from where you left off last night in bed, while on the train to work.

iPhone5-Library
   
iPhone5-Highlight

If you’re new to Readmill, it serves up a sweet, social way to read, letting you highlight quotes within a book and share these snippets across the social sphere. With that in mind, it also acts as a social network of sorts, letting you ‘follow’ other bookworms.

It supports most of the major ebook formats including ePub, PDF and Adobe DRM, and lets you buy and bring your books from stores such as Kobo and Feedbooks. Your whole library is stored in your personal cloud, which you can now access anywhere on any iOS device.

“Our aim is to give readers the most enjoyable reading experience possible, whether it’s reading via a tablet or a smartphone,” explains Henrik Berggren co-founder and CEO of Readmill. “We understand that in different situations readers require different tools, so when you’re reading and relaxing at home, you might use an iPad, whereas in more confined or busy places, or on the go, your iPhone may be preferred. We were finding that a growing number of our users wanted to read their e-books in this way and the ability to read via a smartphone has been the most requested feature within our existing community to date – so this was a natural next step in development.”

Certainly, more and more people are reading on their smartphones, so this is a good move. Though the larger screens available on the likes of many Android handsets would surely work even better on this front, but there’s no definite word yet on when an Android version will arrive.

“We’ve been tracking the remarkable growth of Android, and after releasing iPhone one of the top requests for Readmill is an Android app,” the company tells us. “We’re definitely not ignoring those requests.”

Readmill was founded in Berlin by Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud in December 2010 and officially launched out of beta to the public December 2011.

The updated Readmill app, optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, is available to download now.

Readmill | iOS

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Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock

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