Skip to main content

Google’s new Bubble Zoom feature will make reading comics on your phone easier

Google’s new Bubble Zoom feature will make reading comics on your phone easier

/

All the better to enjoy the punching

Share this story

San Diego Comic-Con is officially in full swing, and Google is getting in on the action with a new feature meant for comics fans. The company just announced that Google Play Books now supports a feature called Bubble Zoom, which uses machine learning to detect text bubbles in comic panels and increase their size with just a tap. With it, Android users on phones and tablets can enjoy full page layouts without sacrificing readability.

All the better to enjoy the punching

Anyone who reads comics on their smartphone can tell you that reading dialogue can be difficult, especially on smaller screen sizes. Comixology has up until now gotten around the problem with Guided View, which zooms in on panels and pages to highlight speech and art one scene at a time. Google's Bubble Zoom feature (which isn't the greatest name, I know) simply blows up the text without zooming in on the image on the page. It already promises to be a better way to enjoy splash pages and big scenes. Just tap the screen to highlight the text you want to see.

Bubble Zoom

Google is rolling out Bubble Zoom with the latest version of Play Books as a technical preview, and users can test it out on collected volumes from both Marvel and DC. Fans can also get 50 percent off select comics from the Big Two every day during the Comic-Con. Not a bad way to start a convention.

Catch up with all of the San Diego Comic-Con news right here!