What I want from my epub reader app

[bonedoll]

I've been hanging on to Stanza by Lexcycle for ever so long on my iPhone 4G. Was crushed when Amazon bought it over and decomissioned it. I upgraded my iOS to version 5, and then to version 6, with a LOT of trepidation. But this hardy little app made it through just fine. I'm just ... NOT...going to upgrade to version 7.0, though.

I need to find a worthy successor. The last physical novel I read was Tad William's Shadowplay trilogy, and that must've been at least a year ago. I read official epubs, epubs from AO3 and self-made compilations of fics that I convert into epubs.

The best epub readers for iPhone are Stanza, Bluefire and Marvin, which is rather new and free only for a very short period of time. Marvin has by far the most features and seems absolutely perfect. Bluefire has a few flaws in the display that irked me, though they're nothing major. Readmill is such a pretty app, but it's main flaw is the lack of categorical organisation. I've tried other apps like Kindle, Nook (want me to sign up, FORGET IT MAN), the native iBooks (so slow in flipping pages!), ShuBook, YiBook...you name it.

I need to find an equivalent for Marvin on the Google Play Store because I want to jump ship to Android; but that's a story for another day.

So, what features must I have in my epub reader?



Library and Organisation

• Display of book titles in library: Individual book titles should not be displayed in a font so large that I only get to see 3-4 titles per page view on my phone.


• View sorting: Would be great to be able to view books by category, title or author, at the very minimum. As well as "recently read".


• Search function: major plus point. Stanza doesn't really have this, but it's something I can get around. Marvin and Bluefire have this function.
  
  
• Ability to create categories for the epubs, and transfer them into said categories with ease. For instance, "novels", "young adult", "Harry Potter fanfiction" and so on. Readmill is a beautiful, beautiful app, but it can't do this.

Reading the book

• Page turning: just tap at the right and the next page should swipe in. No fade-in and fade-out, no slow page flipping, no vertical scrolling. Bluefire, Stanza, Readmill and Marvin all do this nicely. iBooks irritates me no matter what page turning option I choose.


• Changing the size of the text. Stanza is the ultimate champion here: use two fingers to pinch it or out to change the text size. For the rest, it's a two step procedure where I have to tap on the text icon at the bottom, then change the text size. I can live with that.


• Changing the level of brightness. Stanza WINS too. Swipe up to make it brighter and down to make it dimmer. Bluefire allows this too once you've said so in the settings. Marvin needs you to tap on the lighting icon at the bottom of the screen, but it's a quick two step process and I can totally live with that. (This feature is REALLY important as I read in bed in the dark sometimes...)


• Changing the paragraph and line spacing. I didn't think I'd need this function, but Marvin has it and it really IS incredibly useful.


• Ability to display images within the text properly i.e. NOT TRUNCATED. Bluefire doesn't do this very well (It truncated the cover of the latest Bane Chronicles, grr!). This is really important for book covers and for fanart within a fanfic.


• Ability to display the header of AO3 fics - minor point. The header usually consists of a table with a visible border and text inside; so on a tiny phone screen the text tends to spill out of the borders, which is fine - but it shouldn't be truncated.

Connectivity

• Getting files from storage: it's all very easy to just access Dropbox on my phone, or an email attachment, and then open it in the email reader. Marvin and Readmill, once inside these apps, allow you to get files from Dropbox directly. Readmill even lets you download the whole lot of epubs with just one click, whereas it's file by file for Marvin. (This part REALLY irks me: Readmill, why can you can let me transfer loads of files at one go, but not let me categorize the crazy loads of files?)


• Ability to sync between devices so that I could read where I left off. Uhm, VERY small plus point and actually not necessary at all.
  
  
• Sharing on social media: Emphatic NO to this, I'd never want to do that, and I'd be mortally afraid of accidentally tapping on the wrong button and that happening. I mean you, Readmill. I also don't want to have to create an account, or have the app accessing my facebook/twitter/pinterest/whatever accounts. That said, if the app does come with such functions, but has all the above criteria I mentioned, I'll still take it.

The overall verdict:
Stanza: wonderful, love it, very intuitive, only lacks a search function. Already unavailable on the AppStore, so new users don't think about trying it.
Bluefire: only flaw is the truncation of images within the text - probably due to an inability to resize the image to fit the size of the screen. They might fix this eventually, I guess. Or I could just get a Nexus 7. Plus point: also available on Google Play Store.
Marvin: PERFECT and the strongest contender on the AppStore. Even has options to change the paragraph and line spacing. Is not free though; but I'd gladly pay for it. (Got it free during a limited period.)
Readmill: very pretty, but totally lacking in organisational features and seems to be more interested in getting readers to share their thoughts and participate in 'community'. Not for the hardcore reader.

And well, if you know of an equivalent app on the Google Play Store that can do everything that Marvin does, please let me know!