Top 5 Android PDF Viewers

Foxit MobilePDF is a Android PDF Viewer that provides a way to manage PDFs. Compatible with Android phones and tablets, users can access, annotate, manage and share PDFs using the app.

Introduction of Foxit MobilePDF:

When the app is launched, the home screen displays three tabs namely Local, Cloud and History. Local displays a list of all PDFs stored on the device. It also has the ability to filter the list to only favorite files or folders and PDFs. The search tool is available by clicking on the magnifying glass on the top right. As its name suggests, the Cloud tab allows Box, Dropbox, KuaiPan, OneDrive and Google Drive to be connected to the app. The History tab is for the recently viewed PDFs.

To open a PDF, simply click on a PDF. When reading a file, annotation options such as drawing an arrow and highlighting text is conveniently placed on top of the screen. At the lower right corner there are two icons. The first one is for selecting single page, continuous page or thumbnail. The second one is for choosing between landscape and portrait.

Tapping the menu shows the Brightness, Settings, Share and About options. Brightness menu allows you to conveniently adjust how bright the screen is and also toggle between day or night mode. Next, the Settings menu contains two categories, PDF View and PDF Annotation. PDF View is where settings for remembering last position, highlighting links, keeping zoom ratio, preventing the screen from turning off automatically and choosing single page modes are found. Below this is the PDF Annotation group for changing the annotation author, enabling pressure sensitivity and remembering last annotation panel settings.

Advantages:

• Users are able to highlight text and bookmark pages.
• This app has no distracting advertisements unlike other android PDF readers.
• Sharing options are also available making it easy to send PDFs via Bluetooth, Gmail, Dropbox and Google Drive.

Disadvantages:

• There is some noticeable lag when zooming the PDFs.
• There are also rare crashes when opening PDFs.

qPDF Viewer is another PDF reader which can be downloaded in the Google Play Store. It supports features like text reflow, bookmarks, zoom, go to page and lock overlay.

Introduction of qPDF Viewer:

Upon opening the app, a blank screen appears. To open files, the user clicks the folder icon in the upper right which then brings the list of all the PDFs found on the device. The cloud services that are supported by the app are Box, Google Drive and Dropbox. Clicking on a PDF displays the contents for reading.

Advantages:

• Although the app does not pack with a ton of features, it is simple and user-friendly. It has a beautiful design.
• The main point of the app is the text reflow feature since not all PDF reader apps have this feature. Text reflow adjusts the font size of the PDF for better readability.

Disadvantages:

• It lacks of full screen mode while reading a PDF.
• Some bugs cause the app to crash when opening a PDF.

Adobe Reader is a productivity app in the Google Play Store that is used to read PDFs from email, websites and other apps in Android.

Introduction of Adobe Reader:

The main screen of the app lists all the PDFs that have been added. Clicking on the upper left corner brings the menu on the left side of the screen. This is where Recents, Documents, Acrobat.com, My Account and Help can be accessed. Recents displays all the newly opened PDFs while Documents shows all the PDFs stored in the device. When users clicks on a PDF, they will be able to read the PDF. While reading a PDF, there are options available on top of the screen. These include the capability to export PDF to Word or Excel, use a variety of tools to annotate, bookmark a page, and search text. Furthermore, the user can choose between single page and continuous scroll in the settings. Night mode can also be turned on through the settings.

Advantages:

• Upon installation, the app scans all the PDFs found on your device and conveniently lists them in the Documents tab. PDFs from other apps like Gmail or Dorpbox can also be added quickly and easily.
• The app is suitable for studying since it packs a lot of useful features like adding notes, highlighting, underlining and adding text.
• Reading PDFs within the app are smooth and lag free.
• Adobe has a cloud storage service that lets users store and access files on all devices by signing up for an Adobe ID at Acrobat.com. This feature is also good for backing up your documents.

Disadvantages:

• Some of its nice features are only accessible when you have a paid subscription. For instance, converting PDF to Word, Excel and RTF formats and making scanned text editable with optical character recognition requires you to pay $1.99 per month or $23.88 per year.
• There is no option to clear the Recents which is important when there are already a lot of files in the app.

As an open source app available in the Google Play Store, PDF Viewer can search and open PDFs saved in an Android device.

Introduction of PDF Viewer:

The home screen of the app is a wooden shelf with all PDFs are displayed here. The PDF books are categorized by location where the file is stored in the device. The first category is the Recent books where the newly opened PDFs are placed. Swiping to the right allows the user to access the other categories. It also has a search function which can be launched by clicking on the magnifying glass on the top right corner. Beside the magnifying glass is where the user can access the file manager to look for PDFs within the device.

Options such as full screen, showing title, forcing portrait or landscape, day or night, splitting pages, cropping pages, manual crop, setting as thumbnail and zoom are all available when reading a PDF. The app also allows bookmarking pages and searching within a document.

Advantages:

• One of the advantages of the app is its ability to render a PDF quickly and accurately.
• Zooming in and out of a PDF is smooth.
• It also possesses unique features such as its capability to configure taps.

Disadvantages:

• Its user interface is poorly designed.

AnDoc is a simple PDF reader for Android. Its home screen contains two tabs, Browse and Recent. Browse is for navigating the file system of the smartphone or tablet while Recent shows all the newly opened PDFs. It has the basic features of a PDF reader app. Features such as adding bookmarks, finding text and zooming are present within the app.

Introduction of AnDoc – PDF & DJVU Reader:

Tapping on the menu button of the device can access the Settings page. It is categorized into two, Book Settings and All Settings. One of the selections that can be set using Book Settings is the First page offset, which is used for entering an index of first page. Another available option is the ability to split landscape pages into two portrait pages. Post-processing effects are also available in the 'Book Settings' where the user can adjust contrast, gamma and exposure among others. For the All Settings, settings for user interface, navigation and history, performance and rendering are available here.

Advantages:

• The best thing about the app is its simplicity and ease of use. It has a beautiful user interface too.
• Pages of the PDFs are rendered quickly and accurately. Zooming and scrolling pages of the PDFs are fast as well.
• It is worth noting that the app supports DJVU format.

Disadvantages:

• The title bar is still displayed when the full screen mode is activated.
• The page goes blank for a while when switching from landscape and portrait view.
• Advertisements are present below the screen which makes it distracting for some users.

There are amount of PDF viewer apps available in the market. You just need to pick up one and then you will be able to read PDF books on your phone. Adobe Reader is a well-known app for reading PDFs on both mobile devices and PC. Most people choose it as their default PDF viewer on Android since it is filled with lots of useful features that benefit both personal and business use.

The following set of instructions is how to add PDFs into Adobe Reader.

• Click on a PDF on your device that you want to add and view in Adobe Reader.
• Click on Adobe Reader when asked which app will be used to open the file.
• The PDF is added to Adobe Reader where the file can be viewed.

Google allows its users to upload and read PDFs by just using an Android device. This is done through its Google Books Store app which is available in the Google Play Store. Here are the steps involved on how to use Google Books Store to upload PDFs and read them.

• Click on the PDF on your device that you want to upload to Google Books Store.
• Select Upload to Play Books in the menu.
• The PDF will start uploading to Google Play Books.
• Finally, the PDF can now be opened in the Google Books Store.

Enumerated below are the steps on how to open PDFs within the browser on Android devices. The steps involve downloading Firefox Browser for Android from the Google Play Store and a Firefox plugin.

• Download 'Firefox Browser for Android' in the Google Play Store.
• Press the menu button of your device and click 'Tools'.
• Click 'Add-ons'.
• Click 'Browse all Firefox Add-ons'.
• Type 'PDF Viewer' in the text box.
• Click 'Add to Firefox'.
• After installing the add-on, go to a web page with a PDF link.