What this covers
- A phone is about a third the width of the page the document was made for
- Cropping is the universal fix and takes two minutes
- Extracted text reflows perfectly and loses every diagram
- Landscape helps more than people expect on single-column documents
A4 is 210 millimetres wide. A large phone is about 70. The document in your hand was laid out for a page three times the width of the screen you are holding, and since a PDF cannot reflow, something has to give.
There is no setting that fixes this. There are three approaches that make it tolerable and one that consumes an hour and produces a worse document.
One: crop, and crop harder than feels right
This is the fix that works on every document regardless of how it was made. A page laid out for A4 carries 20 to 25 millimetres of margin on each side, which on a phone is roughly a fifth of the screen width showing nothing.
Crop that off and the text expands to fill the space. On our measurements a 20 millimetre crop takes 11pt body text on a 6.1-inch phone from about 1.6 millimetres of cap height to about 2.1 - still small, and the difference between squinting and reading.
Crop a phone copy separately
You can crop harder for a phone than for a tablet, because you are not trying to preserve the look of the page. A 25 mm crop that eats the running header is a bad tablet copy and a good phone copy. Keep them as separate files.
Two: extract the text
When the layout carries no meaning, stop fighting it. A mark scheme, a specification, a reading list, a set of definitions - none of these depend on where the words sit on a page.
Extract the text and read it in a plain text app or a notes app. It reflows perfectly at any width, because there is nothing to preserve. You lose every diagram, every table grid and all the formatting, which is exactly the trade you should be willing to make for that kind of document and should refuse for a question paper.
Three: landscape, for single-column documents
Turning the phone sideways is widely dismissed and works better than its reputation on a single-column document. You get the page width across the long edge of the screen, the text is meaningfully larger, and you scroll more.
It fails on two-column layouts, where you now have half a column filling the screen, and on anything with a wide table. But for a chapter of prose it is the difference between reading and not.
What to do with what
Decided by whether the layout carries meaning.
| Document | Approach | What you give up |
|---|---|---|
| Mark scheme, specification | Extract to text | Layout, which carried nothing |
| Prose chapter, single column | Crop hard, read in landscape | The look of the page |
| Question paper with diagrams | Crop, read in portrait | Nothing, but it stays small |
| Two-column academic paper | Crop, portrait, accept it | Comfort. This is the hard case |
| Anything scanned | Crop only | No text to extract in the first place |
Preparing a phone copy
The hour that gets wasted
Converting the PDF to Word, or to some other reflowable format, in the hope of getting text that fits. The conversion has to infer a structure the PDF never recorded, and on the documents where you most want it - multi-column, figure-heavy, dense - it infers badly.
You end up with an editable file that has confidently interleaved two columns, and because it is editable it looks like something you could fix. That is the hour. Extract the plain text instead, in ten seconds, and know exactly what you have lost.
The measurements
- A4 page width
- 210 mm
- Large phone screen width
- About 70 mm
- Body text at 11pt, uncropped
- About 1.6 mm cap height on screen
- Same text after a 20 mm crop
- About 2.1 mm
- Same text on a 10.9-inch tablet, cropped
- About 3.4 mm
- Printed on paper
- About 2.8 mm
What a phone is genuinely good for
Not reading a paper. But a phone is an excellent place for the condensed version of a mark scheme, for a notes file, and for a list of the mistakes you keep making - all of which are plain text, all of which reflow, and all of which are the things worth rereading in a spare five minutes.
That division is worth being deliberate about. Source documents live on a tablet or on paper; the things you produced live on the phone, where you will see them.
Setting up a phone copy
- Crop harder than you would for a tablet - 25 mm is fine
- Extract the text for anything that is a list rather than a layout
- Try landscape on single-column prose
- Keep notes and condensed material on the phone, source documents elsewhere
- Do not convert to Word hoping for reflow
Questions and answers
Why can I not just increase the font size?
Because a PDF has no independent font size to increase. The text is drawn at a fixed size on a fixed page, so making it bigger means making the page bigger, which is zooming.
Are there PDF apps that handle phones better?
Some offer a reflow mode, which works on properly tagged documents and not on most exam material. The difference between apps is much smaller than the difference cropping makes.
Is it worth reading past papers on a phone at all?
For reviewing something you have already worked through, yes. For attempting a paper, no - the medium is wrong and you cannot write on it.
What about a foldable?
Unfolded it is a small tablet and behaves like one, which is to say much better. Cropping still helps.
