1. For Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna smartphone users, there are a couple of ways to read PDF files, here are a few :
- Adobe PDF Reader – Preinstalled in most Symbian smartphones. It hasn’t change for years. It’s clumsy. Very slow. Very heavy, and not optimised for touch experience. Say what you want but for me, Adobe PDF Reader is an example of a bad application that is not suitable to be used in today’s smartphone.
- Picsel Smart Office – Excellent PDF handling capabilities. It renders multi-megabytes PDF files very beautifully. But it’s not a standalone PDF reading app. It’s a full office suite with many functions. http://store.ovi.com/content/44983
- AlternateReader – OK, but not very good handling big PDF files.
- PDF+ – It hasn’t been updated for years.
- Mobile Documents – Excellent email app with documents viewing function. But you need internet connection. No support for offline PDF reading.
2. I mean, seriously? There’s not even a good & fluid PDF Reader app for Symbian in this modern age? What do Symbian users do with their smartphones? Only for making calls? Pfffttt….
3. The situation is so frustrating. If you receive PDF email attachments, and if you are not using Mobile Documents, you’ll be suffering from headache.
4. Today’s requirement for a proper smartphone is not the same as say, 5 years ago. Handling documents properly is one of the functions that defines true smartphones.
5. Enter PDF Eagle. A PDF reader app for Symbian that blows away other Symbian PDF readers. For real!
6. Visiarc, the team led by Peter Lindgren, the same team who brought us the multiple award winnings Mobile Documents, is working very hard to bring real PDF app for Symbian. I mean, this is “THE PDF Reader for Symbian“. Period.
7. The interface is fluid and smooth. It’s less cluttered. Menus and navigations are hidden and only shown when necessary by a simple tap on the screen. The app presents PDF documents as it should.
8. Pinching and zooming is also everywhere. Making viewing PDF documents a pleasure. And for the first time in Symbian, if I’m not mistaken, the app will follow screen orientation in all four axis. It doesn’t matter how you hold your Symbian smartphones when using PDF Eagle, it will rotate accordingly. This is cool!
9. The smoothness of PDF Eagle is apparent not only in the UI. But also in the rendering of PDF pages. It can open multi-megabytes of PDF files with ease. It does stutter when the PDF files contain a lot of graphics but for text based PDF documents, it has no problem dealing with.
10. I cant show you how PDF Eagle truly performs in words. Hence, I shot this video for you guys to see yourself the goodness inside PDF Eagle.
11. PDF Eagle was developed using Visiarc’s proprietary rendering technology and for the UI, they use Qt.
12. PDF Eagle is not only about the application. It’s a solution where Visiarc plans to bring the best PDF experience on your mobiles. For example, if you find a PDF document that cant be opened using PDF Eagle, you can email it to the team and they will inspect the file. Any improvements and patches will be included in future updates which will come free for regisered users.
13. When asked on why Visiarc brings PDF Eagle, Peter Lindgren answers :
“Dealing with PDFs on your mobile has always been a challenge, especially large PDFs. Frankly, we were missing a touch-optimized fullscreen PDF experience. We wanted a responsive interface that maximizes the use of the limited screen real estate, so we developed the PDF Eagle app to deliver its smooth and pleasant mobile PDF experience”.
14. On future updates and improvements, Peter adds :
“We hope that users will appreciate the user experience we deliver and see this as a good and promising start for something that will become great, and ever greater if they give us their feedback. Full text find/search, text reflow and links, top the wish list now, but we’d like users to provide their feedback.
Send your wishes to us!”.
15. PDF Eagle, in it’s current form is not perfect, it does have some weaknesses like unable to open PDF files at random, but for for an initial release, it’s an impressive app.
16. One more thing, Peter, if you read this, can we have a demo version with limited functions please? Maybe some people will be more convinced about it after testing it.
Get PDF Eagle for only 3 Euros from Nokia Store : http://store.ovi.com/content/186299
Official website is at : http://www.pdfeagle.com
Thank you Visiarc!
- For i-Symbian.Com
- Asri al-Baker
- October 19th 2011
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