If you want to read PDF files on your Pocket PC, you have a couple of choices in PDF Readers. In this article I will evaluate and compare the three most popular PDF Readers for Pocket PC: Foxit Reader for Pocket PC; PocketXpdf; and Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0.

Foxit Reader for Pocket PC (Version 1.1, Build 1230)

Foxit Reader is the lightest PDF reader - it does not consume near the resources as Adobe Reader. But I don’t think it is a very useful PDF reader.

Foxit Reader for Pocket PC does not recognize tagged files, so there is no way to reflow PDF files to fit to a Pocket PC screen. Instead you must rely on Foxit Reader’s Zoom In and Zoom Out option in order to read documents.

You can see that Foxit Reader preserves the original formatting of the PDF file, including the excess margins, so a lot of screen space is simply wasted.

Zooming In and Out is accomplished by tapping the plus (+) or minus (-) icons displayed on the bottom of the screen or by tapping the stylus on the Pocket PC screen. When you zoom into a document you can move around the document by dragging the stylus up and down or left and right across the screen, or by tapping the document minimap (see the small gray picture of the document found in the lower right hand corner of the screen). When moving around the document, the text blurs until you stop moving the stylus (see the screenshot on the right). I think it would be tedious to read a large document on Foxit Reader.

You can view the document in full screen mode and you can turn the document minimap feature off for a better viewing experience.

You can easily rotate the document from portrait to landscape.

Foxit Reader recognizes pre-existing bookmarks in documents, but there’s no way to create a new bookmark in a document. If you exit a document before you are finished reading it, be sure to write down the page number you were on because Foxit Reader won’t remember your place in the document. When you reopen the document to resume reading it, Foxit Reader will open to the first page of the document.

PocketXpdf (v0.5)

PocketXpdf takes a little longer to open a file, and moving from page to page is quite a bit slower than for Foxit Reader or Adobe Reader.

PocketXpdf’ provides a "View Text Only" option that removes all of the document’s formatting (including paragraph indentations) and "reflows" the text to fit the smaller mobile device screen.

You can view documents in full screen mode and adjust the font size from 11 up to 16. PocketXpdf also supports VGA screens.

PocketXpdf includes a Zoom In and Zoom Out option, but zooming is very slow and I encountered memory problems before I could zoom the text to a comfortable size for reading.

Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0

Adobe Reader for Pocket PC has the largest footprint and is a memory hog. But compared to the other PDF readers, it offers the most options, provides the most comfortable reading experience and accommodates the widest variety of documents. Some of the options that keep me coming back to Adobe Reader include:

Adobe Reader recognizes tagged PDF files and reflows the files to work with a smaller mobile device screen. You can also see that reflowing documents preserves existing formatting (paragraph indentations) and removes excess margins.

Pressing and holding the stylus on the screen reveals a menu with many different options, such as "Full Screen" and "Automatically Scroll."

You can rotate the view from portrait to landscape either by using Adobe’s rotate function or by using the Pocket PC’s rotate option (if available).

You can use Adobe Reader’s Zoom In option to make the text as large as you need it to be to read comfortably or you can use Adobe Reader’s Zoom Out option to make the text as small as you can stand it.

You can customize the toolbar that runs along the bottom of the screen to display up to 11 icons along the bottom of the screen by tapping the up arrow found on the lower left hand side of the screen and selecting "Customize Toolbar"

Protected PDF files

There are two possible levels of protection you may encounter with PDF files: 1) DRM level encryption and 2) Password Protection.

PDF formatted eBooks that you purchase or check out of a library may include DRM level encryption. To read DRM encrypted PDF files on a mobile device requires activating the device through Adobe’s website. The Pocket PC activation on Adobe’s website appears to be broken (I managed to activate one of my 4 Pocket PCs through Adobe’s website months ago, but now I receive error messages when I attempt to activate any of my other mobile devices). If you can get your Pocket PC activated on Adobe’s website, then you can transfer and read DRM files on the device by:

You can not use Adobe Reader 8.0 or Adobe Acrobat 8.0 because this version of software does not include a Digital Editions module. Instead you will be forced to use Adobe’s new Digital Editions software (this is a free standing PDF reader) that does not support Pocket PCs or other mobile devices at this time.

Adobe Reader for Pocket PC is the only PDF reader that can accommodate DRM encrypted PDF files.

The other level of protection revolves around files that do not have DRM encryption on them but are password protected. Password protected files may require a password to open them and may require a separate permission password to copy or print them. All of the PDF readers I evaluated were able to open Password protected files. If the book is protected with a password, you will be prompted to enter the password when you attempt to open it on your Pocket PC.

Final Thoughts & Recommendations

If you only need to read short PDF documents every now and then on your Pocket PC, you can get by with Foxit Reader or PocketXpdf.

If you plan to read a moderate number of short PDF documents on your Pocket PC, you can get by with PocketXpdf.

If you plan to read lengthy PDF documents or DRM encrypted PDF files on your Pocket PC, install Adobe PDF Reader for Pocket PC. Given the memory requirements of Adobe PDF Reader, be sure to install the software to a storage card. Before opening a large PDF file, close all other open applications so as to free up as much program memory as possible and avoid memory issues.