Google Play Books is another reading option available for those who prefer a tablet or smartphone with a larger screen—those often called phablets—for their favorite books or even comics. Play Books has established itself as a serious competitor to the behemoth Amazon and its Kindle.
Google has just released a major update to its ebook app for Android, bringing a couple of interesting and useful features, along with some rather peculiar details hidden in the app's code. Among these new features is the ability to notify users when a new book in a series they're eagerly following is added.
The first feature is a search function that suggests titles based on the user's purchased books, helping them discover new books that might interest them. This is another one of those features we've come to expect from other services, and it seems to be standard practice for an app that offers good reading recommendations tailored to our tastes.
The second feature is Play Books' ability to notify users when a new book in a series they're hooked on is available. This is indicated by a small badge on the series icon, which is actually a tiny blue dot.
This new functionality seems to be more useful for comics that are usually updated periodically with these new editions and which, by the way, are in good shape as we learned a few days ago, breaking sales records.
It remains to be seen whether Google will soon incorporate book recommendations when they are mentioned in videos, a feature found in the code of the new version that is not yet available.