If you count the number of e-readers in the average train compartment, many people seem to agree: a smartphone is not suitable for reading a book. The new Dutch app Immer wants to adjust that image in a smart way.
Ever wants to reinvent reading books on iOS
Although there has been a digital bookstore on every iPhone and iPad for years, we know very few people who read an entire book via the screen of their iDevice. Pretty crazy, of course, since the iPhone is technically perfectly capable of making a book readable.
Journalist Niels’ t Hooft has therefore created a new app that rethinks the way of reading on a smartphone and tablet. By looking at the pros and cons of these devices when it comes to reading books, Immer takes a slightly different approach than we are used to.
Books are entered in a special way in the app, so that paragraphs don’t just break when your screen is full. Instead, careful thought has gone into when a piece of text breaks down and moves to the next page.
As a result, it can happen that there is only a small paragraph in the middle of your screen, which makes reading a lot more pleasant. Moreover, in this way the tension that the writer had in mind with the page layout of a paper book remains intact. You can easily browse by tapping the screen.
The app also took a good look at the three colored Activity rings of the Apple Watch. You will find a variant of this at the bottom of your screen while reading. With three rings, Immer shows how far you are in the chapter, the part of the book and the total number of pages. This way you can see at a glance whether you can just finish a chapter before you have to stop reading.
Music while reading
To immerse you even more in the atmosphere of a story, Immer also has a music function, which plays accompanying songs while you read. For example, the book Good Men by Anon Grunberg now features prominently in the app, with three hours of music that the writer listened a lot while making the story.
You can read the first part of the book for free, after which you can purchase the rest for 10.99 euros in the app. If you are still not finished, then there is a series of short stories by Grunberg waiting for you, which you can purchase for 1.09 euros each. As far as we’re concerned, Immer is off to a promising start. Although the question now is whether we have to wait a long time for the next book that comes to iOS in this way.