Needing an iPhone app that will let me upload pdf files to it, then read them.

projectmayhem

Title just about says it all. I have some pdf files that are around 60mb each that I would like to get on my iPhone so that I can read them on the go. I am browsing the shittly laid out app store and anything I see that looks close to what I want cost 5$ and I dont want to throw down money on something that might not work.

So far I've tried Files Lite and while it seems it would do the trick, it requires you to have a WiFi connection to be able to upload your files (this makes zero sense to me) and I dont have a WiFI connection here at home.

Anyone know of anything that will work?

Szechuanosaurus

There are lots of file transfer/storage applications that include PDF viewers, but unfortunately as you've discovered they pretty much all use WiFi to transfer the files. I suspect that Apple has locked access to the data cable for third party apps otherwise a USB alternative would surely already exist.

However, you could use Box.net to transfer the PDFs to an online box.net account from your computer and then download them to the iPhone either via edge/3G or from a WiFi access point somewhere else. You only need a connection long enough to download them, once they are in your box.net application I believe that's them on you phone. If not, you can use something like ReaddleDocs to transfer them permanently to your iPhone.

rockmonkey

Can you not get a pdf viewer app and then just attach the pdf to an email and email it to yourself as an attachment then open it?

Gdiguy

rockmonkey wrote: »

Can you not get a pdf viewer app and then just attach the pdf to an email and email it to yourself as an attachment then open it?

This doesn't even require an app; for just viewing, the iphone will let you view pdf attachments, so this might be the easiest solution to your problem. Since this limits you to whatever your email attachment size limit is, 60 mb pdfs may be above the size limit, but that will vary (I forget what gmail's attachment size limit is, my school's used to be 25mb)

I poked around a little yesterday and didn't see anything like this, which was vaguely surprising...

Szechuanosaurus

I'm not sure the mail app permanently downloads atatchements, so potentially whenever he wanted to view it he'd have to download it again. Which could be a pain in the arse. It is very frustrating, the iphone does a very good job of viewing PDFs once you get them onto it. With wifi it's easy peasy, without you need to jump through hoops and deal with slow transfer speeds when a USB 2.0 cable is sitting right there with no apparent means to use it.

DeathPrawn

If you don't have an objection to jailbreaking your iPhone, you can manually copy PDFs onto your phone's filesystem (via FTP, AFP, SFTP, whatever). There are then a handful of different methods you can use to open them up using the built-in PDF viewer. It's a similar idea to e-mailing yourself the files (use some method to get the data onto your phone, then use Apple's reader), but copying the data will be much faster.