While I dearly love my Kindle, my smartphone is always with me. Also, the Kindle doesn’t have a backlit screen (which is the whole point of a Kindle really), and sometimes a reading lamp spreads too much light – such as when your significant other is trying to catch some sleep and you want to read in bed. So when I’m out and about, or late at night, I may find myself reaching for my smartphone rather than my Kindle for some quality reading material.

When I do that, the app I usually use is Moon+ Reader,  a superb e-book reader. I’ve tested several reader apps, and Moon+ just won me over.

android books

This is the front screen, and it actually shows one of the few weak points in the Moon+ experience – the banners. But still, the app’s creator needs to make a living somehow, and the ads are only limited to this screen. Let’s see what an ePub book looks like:

books for android

A few things to note here - it’s full-screen; there’s a slick information bar at the bottom that takes up very few pixels, yet clearly shows the battery percentage, current time, chapter name (if available) and your progress through the book. The whole thing feels very clean and polished. If you want to read during the day, you might want to pick a different theme.

books for android

When you tap the center of the screen, you get the top and bottom bars. Most of the icons on the bottom bar are self-explanatory, but there are a few I’d like to dwell on.

First, let’s check out auto-scrolling (the Play button). Moon+ offers a number of auto-scrolling options:

books for android

The one I like best is the first one, Rolling blind by pixel. In action, it looks like this:

books for android phones

You can see the scrolling line near the top of the screen; in the screenshot it looks like a visual glitch, but in reality it’s a line smoothly scrolling down the screen, gradually revealing the next page, pixel by pixel. You can use the volume buttons to control the scrolling speed. I love this method, because the text you’re reading isn’t moving around while you’re trying to read it. When the speed is right, you can just get to the end of the page and move your eyes back up to the top of the screen, where the next page will already be waiting. It’s a very smooth reading experience.

Moon+ is extremely customizable.  You can get to the options using the right-most button on the bottom bar.

books for android phones

Visual options first:

books for android phones

You can tweak the font size, the colors, and the font itself.

Next, Control options:

image

This one just goes on and on, letting you configure what happens when you tap each area of the screen, the volume buttons, the Back, Search and Camera keys, and all sorts of swiping moves (right to left, left to right, top to bottom, bottom to top). In short, you can tweak, change and personalize just about anything here.

Next, Miscellaneous :

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Note how it can keep your phone awake, and lets you swipe the two edges of the screen to adjust font size and brightness.  Much like the Control Options dialog, this one scrolls down for several screens, revealing settings such as "remind me to rest my eyes", and others. Moon+ Reader also offers multiple themes, not just the two you’ve seen so far:

android books

Final Thoughts

Moon+ Reader is a fantastic ebook reader for Android, with numerous customization options and lots of power. If you’re looking to read books on your device, this is certainly one of the best apps to try.  However, if you prefer another, be sure to let us know about it in the comments below.