eReader Pro has been long awaited by many thousands of BlackBerry users and today it has finally arrived. It is available for the most popular models (BlackBerry Curve, Storm, Pearl, Bold, 7130, 8110, 8120, 8130, 8220, 8300, 8310, 8320, 8330, 8350i, 8703e, 8707, 8800, 8820, 8830, 8900, 9000, 9500, and 9530) and includes the ability to download your bookshelf to your device without the need of a desktop. You cannot buy books direct through the application, but the facility is available to do so via the mobile site (linked in the menus) and then you can head back to the application and download your purchase. That is the theory anyway…

It is very early days, hours even at this stage, but I could not log in to my account via my Curve 8900 and continually received invalid user name or password errors. I believe this to be a server issue because the same user and password works on a desktop and I occasionally receive other errors as well. This issue is similar to the problems encountered at the launch of eReader for iPhone so things should improve soon and we should all be able to grab our eReader and Fictionwise purchases via wireless soon.

An example book is included in the application (Tarzan of the Apes) and it is pleasing to see the classic eReader simplicity brought to the BlackBerry platform. You can choose any of the fonts loaded on your device and also change the font sizes as required, but I would personally put the presentation up there with MobiPocket. The eReader application has the advantage over MobiPocket because there are droves of people who have left Palm OS and Windows Mobile and headed to BlackBerry and the iPhone, and thus a large customer base is already and waiting to buy more books. Being able to carry a large library in the palm of your hand is also an advantage, when the facility works properly.

To conclude, eReader on BlackBerry is as impressive as many of us wished it would be, and once the teething problems are sorted, we should have a new king of the BlackBerry eBook hill.