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Audiobooks

Audiobooks

by jana o. on Aug 17, 2010 8:52:21 PM — read 3,878 times

TAGS: Android Market, Apps,

Tested version: 1.1.8
Latest version: 1.3.1

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Summary

Audiobook’s market blurb sounds promising:


“Listen to over 2,800 audiobooks totally free. Taken from the Librivox Project these beloved classics are now on Android. Easily stream or download the books. Perfect for your commute, relaxing at home, in bed, or while at the gym. The app keeps your place for you with automatic bookmarking across your whole library.”


It goes without saying that we simply had to check out this app. Read on to find out what our verdict is.
 


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Features & Use

Section rating: * * * * *

The app really does provide a lot of freely accessible audio books—here’s a brief selection of available works:


The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Winter's Tale
The Sorrows of Young Werther
…


All Audiobooks are LibriVox recordings, which means that they are public domain and therefore downloadable free of cost.


You can listen to the recordings online (streaming), or else download them (whilst listening to that particular audio book if you so choose).
Audiobooks is a pretty awesome deal, no question about it. That being said, I have to warn you not to expect professional readers, like the ones you might be used to from other audio books, because that’s not the case with this app.


LibriVox.org have made it their mission to publish all public domain books as audio books. The readers are basically every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and their skills range from “WTF??” to “Hey, not bad!”. You may even stumble across a few speakers who sound really professional, though I have to say that during my test of this app I didn’t come across anyone who was as talented as the speakers you hear reading normal audio books or in radio commercials, etc.

 

Screen & Controls

Section rating: * * * * *

Using Audiobooks is very intuitive and doesn’t really require grand explanations. You’ll find the following categories on the display:


All Titles
Authors
Genres
Narrators
Languages
Most Popular
Surprise Me
My Library


This is where you start your search for interesting audio books. There’s also a Search function in the upper half of the screen that allows you to pin-point your search for a specific publication.


Once you’ve located a book via one of the categories or the search function you can click on it in order to read a synopsis of the book. There are two buttons near the bottom which allow you to either hear a sample from the book or play it back straight away. If you let the book playback immediately it automatically gets downloaded as well (a function which you can switch off – if you wish – via the menu button and Settings). The books you’ve downloaded wind up in the CrossForward folder of your SD card. You can also play them – using Astro, for instance – on your standard player, although they don’t show up in the player’s display.


The Audiobooks player is just as easy to use as the app itself. It has the usual buttons:


Play/Pause
Skip (forwards/backwards)


… as well as a button which opens up the list of chapters. The downloading process is shown at the bottom of the screen, and you can abort or restart it at any point.


My Library shows you all the audio books you’ve downloaded/listened to and lets you revisit them.

Bottom line:
If the lack of professional speakers won’t dampen your enjoyment of these audio books my guess that you’ll really enjoy this little app. It deserves its four stars for Screen & Controls because controls works like a charm. The app’s major downfall is its stability (see below for more details). As far as the quality and talent of the readers go: to each his own, I say!
 

Speed & Stability

Section rating: * * * * *

Audiobook’s performance on the Milestone was satisfactory, thought the ads aren’t displayed correctly at the bottom of the screen (which, let’s face it, I’m not exactly upset about), due to the high resolution. However, the app didn’t perform well at all on the G1. I kept getting “Application is not responding” messages, and the player wouldn’t obey me, either; for instance, when I wanted to skip to the next chapter I wound up five chapters further instead.

 

Price/Performance Ratio

Section rating: * * * * *

The app can be downloaded free of charge from the Android Market.

Comparable Apps

Ambling BookPlayer Lite

97 audiobooks

Report comparable or similar apps

Reviews of this app in other languages

Review "Audiobooks" from Dec 27, 2009 (German)

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Good
Features
*****
Screen
*****
Speed
*****
Price
*****
Market Rating:
*****
AndroidPIT User Rating:
*****
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Market Comments

* * * * *   Coup, Feb 9, 2012
New Discoveries!! Highly recommended listening!! Any book by James Allen. All with great narration too! For these books alone i love this app!..thank you:-)
* * * * *   Michelle, Feb 7, 2012
For a free app, it's pretty good Narrators are a mixed bag as other reviewers have mentioned, but considering they're volunteers most are great & a couple sound like pros. I've esp enjoyed the old scifi, a lot of which are out-of-print & hard to find.
* * * * *   Shaylia, Feb 7, 2012
Umm.. Hardly any of the stories would play, and the ones that did were boring...
* * * * *   Judy, Feb 6, 2012
Love d classic 4*s for now, I don't like them always changing the readers in the same story:/
* * * * *   Rich, Feb 6, 2012
!!!!! Love this app... but still does not work on pics nexus. Crashes when story loads
* * * * *   brian, Feb 6, 2012
Will give 5 stars if, Great app, and I'm considering paying for the full version to get rid of the ads, but it needs a variable narrator speed option, or the option to use a 3rd party plugin to get the double speed playback. ie: Presto
* * * * *   Marc, Feb 5, 2012
Great free app It's a great app. Lots of books ( it's classic books free of copyright ), categorized, multiple languages! Audio or reading is not always top notch but remember that it's free.
* * * * *   Nick, Feb 5, 2012
AWESOME Great but some of these readers are very boring and some, it seems, cannot read. And some have voices like Angels. And one chick has such a s*+y voice, i feel i should pay to listen to it
* * * * *   Dan, Feb 4, 2012
Can't move to sd. Its great to be able to listen to free audio books. However you can't move to sd and it leaves an icon in your task tray
* * * * *   Krysti, Feb 4, 2012
Great section of free books
* * * * *   Christopher, Feb 4, 2012
Worth the price Some narrators are HORRIBLE but some are amazing but it definitely delivers hrs of enjoyment which is a win for me.
* * * * *   Matthew, Feb 3, 2012
Decent app Only a couple complaints: If my internet connection drops off in the middle of a download, only part of a chapter is saved and I must manually delete the file to get the app to try again. There should be an option to delete specific chapters to redo partial downloads. Also need a condemnation prompt to delete books from my library.
* * * * *   Sandra, Feb 3, 2012
Love it. Especially the timer facility -you can set it going, and go to sleep knowing it won't be playing all night.
* * * * *   David, Feb 3, 2012
Outstanding Love it , thanks
* * * * *   Charlotte, Feb 3, 2012
Overall Good I have a few criticisms for this app. It would be nice if they screened their readers, I have come across many books that were read very poorly. In some cases one book will have a different reader for each chapter, this is very annoying. But what can you expect when the readers are volunteers. I also found the library lacking in many of my favorite classics. But overall this is a good audio book app.
* * * * *   Adri, Feb 1, 2012
Does not search
* * * * *   Brandon, Feb 1, 2012
lazy people The app has been down for over a week with a force close issue and they still haven't fixed it. Lazy company!
* * * * *   nicholas, Feb 1, 2012
Ice update!!!! Plz update your app for Ice Cream Sandwich!!!!
* * * * *   Matt, Jan 31, 2012
Good. doesn't bookmark correctly. When I pause or quit, it rarely holds the place I stopped. That's very annoying.
* * * * *   Dan, Jan 30, 2012
Needs ICS update. Force close. Needs ICS update. Worked great before.
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