Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

New Speed-Reading Apps Are Devilish Devices

Fashionable new speed-reading apps are not miracle products. An experienced reader's brain does the job more effectively.

March 7, 2014 at 3:16 PM UTC

By Leonid Bershidsky

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Fast and fleeting. Photographer: Angel Navarette/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

If you haven't heard about a "revolutionary" app called Spritz, delivered by a Boston startup that spent the last two years in "stealth mode," you soon will. It's a feature on Samsung's new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, and on the Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch. It has also been covered by Time.com, Business Insider, Huffington Post and lots of other sites, so there is little stealthy about it now.

Spritz claims it can increase a user's reading speed, without any special training, to 1,000 words per minute. That should make it possible to get through "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in 77 minutes.