Droid Comic Viewer review

With Kindle, Aldiko and eBooks for Kobo all available on the Android Market there’s certainly no shortage of options when it comes to consuming literature on your Google Phone, but one area which is slightly less well supported is comics.

Thankfully Droid Comic Viewer – also known as ACV – is here to rectify the sorry situation.

Droid Comic Viewer allows you to read through digital comics in very much the same way an eBook reader does. When a comic is loaded in the appropriate format, you can move through each frame of the page by tapping or swiping with your finger.

Smooth transitions between each frame enliven the experience and the ability to zoom in and out allows you to appreciate the finer detail of the illustrations.

ACV even boasts its own comic file format to which the author can add effects such as sound and vibrations at key moments, tilting animations and auto play sequences – the latter of which are intended to create a sense of pace which is otherwise absent from traditional comics.

Thankfully, it’s also possible to view comics which aren’t presented in this interactive format, as Droid Comic Viewer also allows you to skim through JPEG, BMP, PNG and GIF-based graphic novels.

The key difference is that you have to manually navigate through each frame, although with responsive touch screen interface makes this less of a problem than you might otherwise expect.

There’s a surprising amount of customisation available here. You can adjust the brightness of the application (a setting which is kept separate from your phone’s default brightness), pick different page transition animations and even alter your reading direction (essential when reading Japanese manga, as the novels are presented in right-to-left format, as opposed to the Western tradition of reading from left-to-right).

There’s also the opportunity to pick a custom set of controls, covering all of the available phone inputs from touch screen to keyboard to scroll wheel – where applicable, of course.

Using this option menu you can pick an interface which suits your own personal reading style. Auto-rotate is also present, which allows you to quickly switch between landscape and portrait to get the best possible view on the action.

Other features are more about accessibility and ease of use - for example, like any eBook reader worth its salt, Droid Comic Viewer will always open up at the last page you looked at – a vital feature when you consider you might have to quickly close the app down when you have to hop off a bus or alight at the next train station.

Despite a few force-close events during our review the Droid Comic Viewer offers a near-faultless experience.

There’s even a link within the app itself to download more comics from the Android Market, many of which are offered free of charge and install directly to your SD card, saving precious internal phone memory.

In fact this app is so polished it’s currently being used to distribute the Android versions of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels – which is high praise indeed.

If you prefer pictures and action to dull old text then Droid Comic Viewer is an essential download.