The easiest way to listen to audiobooks on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Best of all, we offer over 2,000 FREE audiobooks with more being added daily.
That ‘s the beginning of the App Store description for the Audiobook Player app for iPhone. I ‘m a pretty avid reader and have always liked the idea of audio books, but mostly found them too expensive to get into “ so this app was of immediate interest and I ‘ve been checking it out for several days now. Hit the jump for a rundown of my thoughts on it
What Does It Do?
It lets you find and listen to a large number of *free* audio books. It pulls its content from the excellent LibriVox site, which strives for the ‘acoustical liberation of books in the public domain ‘. I ‘d never heard of LibriVox before using Audiobook Player, so I ‘m doubly happy to have discovered both the app itself and a site with some very good goals, a sort of aspiring audio version of the Project Gutenberg library:
LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.
One thing to note, and that is noted on Audiobook Player ‘s App Store page, is that its books are only public domain in the US.
You can stream each book, or download chapters at a time “ and over WiFi, 3G, or Edge.
Other features per the App Store description include:
- Preview books before downloading
- Intuitive iPhone interface
- Download 1 chapter at a time
- Download any size chapter over any connection type (no limits)
The app ‘s interface is pretty basic, offering just a few main screens “ a My Books area where all the titles you ‘ve previously chosen appear, a Queue tab that shows any pending downloads, and the Add Books area “ where you can search for a specific title or by keyword, or browse the ‘Top Books ‘ section, which offers 25 or so featured works.
The basic UI will not bowl you over with good looks or sleekness, but it ‘s easy and intuitive to get around, so it works just fine.
What Does It Do Well?
The range of content “ though not yet massive “ is good. I found it easy to find some fiction and non-fiction titles that interested me within only a few minutes.
It ‘s nice that you can choose to stream a book, or to add it your collection and choose to download a chapter at a time. It ‘s very easy all the way around to find content and get listening to it quickly.
The LibriVox site itself is also a useful resource, with RSS feeds featuring new content and podcasts etc.
When you ‘re listening, there are some good actions that you can take via the More button “ Mark an item as played, restart, and auto play the next chapter.
The content itself is delivered very well, at least in my experience so far. On all of the handful of titles I ‘ve chosen, the voices of the narrators are strong and very clear, and the pace of the reading is good as well.
What ‘s Not So Good?
There should be more action options available when listening to a title. For instance it would be very handy to be able to bookmark particular spots (though the app does always pick up where you left off), and to be able to see how many minutes you are into a chapter (as with a song or video).
I also wouldn ‘t mind seeing a setting to tell the app to stop playing after a certain number of minutes (useful if you like to fall asleep reading), and perhaps some way to share links to titles you enjoy “ via email, Twitter etc.
The text descriptions for titles are too short “ you can ‘t expand out the summary text for them, and the Preview option does not really compensate for this, as rather than offering an overview, this just dives straight into the Introduction or start of a book. An overview would be far more useful in my view.
You cannot currently search by author, only by title or keyword. I think that ‘s a big miss, as many of us like to search by authors we like.
You also cannot currently browse by topic or genre, or by any other method other than just looking through the small Top Books section.
Some of my wish list items mentioned here are promised in the next update “ such as browsing by genre, category, and author, rating books, leaving comments, and email to friends. I think those should add a lot to the app.
Overall
If you ‘re a fan of audio books, or like me you ‘re wanting to get into them, Audiobook player seems a very good option, and certainly one that helps the finances. The app itself is just $0.99 and then you ‘ve got access to lots of good free content.
There is certainly room for improvement in the app, but it works well and is already very nice to use. It ‘s also good to see that much of what ‘s on my wish list is already planned for a next update.
For now, I ‘m very happy with the app and have found several books to listen to. I look forward to its future improvements for browsing by genre / author / category and discovering more good content more easily. A definite keeper for me.
Audiobook Player is available in the App Store now, priced at $0.99.
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TAGS: iphone apps
