Title: Repligo Reader 1.1
Developer(s): cerience
Available: Now, Android Market
Price: $4.95
Lasting Impression: A no-frills PDF reader that gives you exactly what you’d expect. Tight Android integration make it easy to pull up files from emails and websites too.
Nitty Gritty: One of the biggest reasons for my downloading of DataViz’s Documents to Go app was to be able to view PDF files. I was somewhat surprised and let down when the initial version did not offer that feature. Along comes Repligo Reader and it fills in quite nicely.
There’s not much to this app other than it reads PFD files. You cannot edit them, although I’m not exactly sure who would want to do that on a 3.2″ screen anyways. Repligo Reader loads quickly and gets right down to it.
I wanted to give this app a real challenge for the first run through so I pulled up a 212MB PDF file of The Watchmen comic book. I thought I might try to choke the G1 and the app at the same time. I’m pleased to say that I didn’t run into one force close.
Upon opening the app, you are given a screen with all the folders on your handset. It’s very obvious which files are PDF’s as they have an easy to read icon for them. Tap the file and it opens up right away.
The accelerometer allows for the orientation to adjust on its own. You don’t have to press any buttons to go from landscape to portrait. In fact, you don’t need to press any buttons at all once your file is opened.  Use your finger to slide from page to page and watch them render quickly. Trackball fans can scroll with that as well. Even in the large file I was using, it loaded up pages instantly. I never had the feeling like the phone was going to stutter.
There are multiple zoom levels, depending on what you are looking at. I also found a couple of other things that I liked with this app. For instance, if you open a file up from the mains screen, it takes you right back to the page you were on. Email attachments can be clicked and saved now, whereas before I couldn’t. I know that these screen shots don’t show it, but text looks amazing using Repligo Reader. Fonts render well and color looks excellent.
It’s also possible to click PDF files within websites to load them up within the app. The two times I tried this, it went through flawlessly. Oh, and if you have password protected files, they open too. Enter it when prompted, and voila!
For $4.95, it might not be worth it to you. In my case, I find it very valuable. I get press releases and PDF announcements all the time and I have long wanted to be able to view them on my G1. As devices with Android get bigger, this app could become even more convenient. MID’s and tablets would benefit greatly to have Repligo Reader installed.
Comments are closed.