Reading on a screen that opens

The largest library most people already own, and the one with the most to gain from it: Amazon sells magazines, graphic novels, textbooks and Print Replica titles that keep a fixed page whatever the screen. Novels reflow and are fine either way. The fixed-page catalogue is where the fold stops being a convenience.

Books and audiobooks in one app, with reading goals and a library that follows the account across devices. The reading itself is reflowed text, so the unfolded gain is a longer page and fewer taps to turn it — modest, and it applies to a very large number of people.

The main alternative to the shop most people default to, and the obvious choice for anyone whose library is in EPUB rather than in one retailer's account. Rebuilt recently, by the developer's own account, with reading and listening in the same place.

A library card against a public library's collection of ebooks, audiobooks and magazines. The magazines are the reason it is this high: periodicals are laid out to a page, and a borrowed magazine on a folded phone is the exact zoom-and-pan exercise the fold exists to end.

A comic reader for files you already have, with OPDS support for your own server. Comics are the purest fixed-layout case there is — the page is a composition, and panel-by-panel guided reading is a clever way of apologising for a screen too small to show it. Unfolded, less apologising.

A client for a Komga server, extensible with scripts, for people who run their own manga library rather than subscribing to one. Manga pages are read as spreads as often as singles, and a spread is the layout that suffers worst on a phone.

A subscription to a very large back catalogue of digital comics, which makes it the easiest way to find out whether reading comics on this thing is actually pleasant. Same argument as any comic reader, with somebody else's library attached.

Newspapers and magazines reproduced as published, which means a broadsheet page arriving at its own proportions. That is unreadable on a folded phone without zooming, and on an unfolded one it is at least a page you can take in a column at a time.

A read-it-later app that takes articles, newsletters, RSS, PDFs and EPUBs into one queue, which is a lot of different shapes of document. The ones that keep their own layout are the ones that benefit; the saved web articles are reflowed text and merely get a longer column.

The oldest idea here and still the cleanest: strip the article to text, store it, read it offline. Nothing about it needs a bigger screen, which is why it is last — but a reflowed article at a comfortable size with the list still visible beside it is a better version of the same thing.