Kobo Books for the iPhone and iPad has just seen a new upgrade today that puts the emphasis on gesture support. You can now pinch and zoom to augment the size of the font while you are reading a book. This is very handy to do this on the fly, rather than manually within the settings menu. The new update also gives you the ability to change the brightness level of the book you are reading by swiping downwards with two fingers.
The new updates honestly feel a little bit underwhelming. The patch notes lead you to believe that is quite easy to change the size of the text on the fly. In reality, when you pinch and zoom, you do not get the type of seamless experience that you see in an internet browser. When you use Safari, Chrome, or Dolphin, it is a very robust experience to pinch and zoom to make your text larger and smaller. The Kobo app feels very sluggish and you actually see a font slider bar appear when you are pinching and zooming. The fact a slider bar even appears is redundant and users do not need the extra visual cue. The same slider appears when you are adjusting the brightness of the app, too.
Honestly, being able to pinch and zoom text in an ebook is a very useful feature. Most serious readers have been trained with interacting with major web-browsers on how to effectively do it. Unfortunately, this update fails to deliver the quality experience for which Kobo is well known.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
