Pros & Cons
-
- Offers the most (and most current) titles of any iPhone e-book reader app.
- Syncing holds you placemark on multiple devices.
-
- Little interface customization.
- No page-turning animation.
- No transfer of your own docs to the phone.
- Can't buy books from within the app.
- No periodicals.
- Weak help.
Kindle for iPhone Specs
| Type: | Personal |
Want the latest Danielle Steele page-turner on your mobile device? If you're an
Signup
With Kindle for the iPhone, you have to sign up for an Amazon account before you can start reading books, a requirement other readers don't have. If you have an existing Amazon account, you can use that to register for the Kindle service. When I first signed in, I was taken to a blank Home page, with a Get Books link at the top-right corner of the screen. The Get Books link brings up a page telling you that the best book-acquiring experience is at the Amazon website for the Kindle Store via your PC. You can also buy books using the iPhone's mobile Safari browser, but the Kindle Store isn't optimized for mobile browsing. I would have preferred the ability to acquire books right from the iPhone app, as you can in pretty much every other iPhone e-reader app.
Popular current titles cost $9.99—you'd pay over $20 in the book store. If you're already a Kindle user, you can download your previously purchased e-books at no extra cost. Amazon's Whispersync technology will even keep your bookmarks up to date on both devices.
As you might guess since Amazon has been in the business for a while, the bookstore is very well organized. You'll find every genre category imaginable, and you can browse Kindle, national top sellers, or Editors' Picks. One quibble: the site doesn't let you peek into the book's contents the way the regular bookstore on Amazon does. As with the Kindle device, the iPhone app lets you grab the first few pages of a book as a free preview. You'll also find the occasional free selection, such as several World's Greatest Books volumes. But there's no Free category to browse, and the table of contents in the greatest books isn't actually linked to the contents. So if you're looking for free classics, you're better off with Stanza or Classics.
Though the Kindle Web store offers newspapers and magazines, when I tried to subscribe to those, the site told me that I had no Kindle or iPhone registered to my Amazon account—strange, considering that I'd just bought books for my iPhone. I can't be sure whether Amazon intends to include magazine and paper content for the Apple device in a later version or not. I'd appreciate seeing mention of this in the Kindle for iPhone help. Speaking of help, since the app's link for help leads to a Web page, content formatted for the iPhone would be preferable. And, unfortunately, you can't transfer your own documents from your PC to the reader: For that, get Stanza or BookShelf.—
Reading Books
To test the reader, I went to the Kindle Store on amazon.com and purchased Drown, a collection of striking stories about the Dominican Republic (where I'd just been on vacation) by Junot Diaz. The site already knew about my iPhone, on which I'd logged in to Amazon just moments before. After I purchased the book online, the title immediately appeared on my Home screen in the iPhone app.
I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the reading experience, after having used a number of other iPhone e-readers. For example, there's no page turning-animation. Instead, you swipe your finger across the page, which slides across like a very wide document rather than a separate page. I prefer the way Stanza lets you turn pages by tapping as well as swiping—easier if you're one-handing the iPhone. You'll also find no autoscrolling, as
One behavior I do like in Kindle for iPhone is that when you leave the app and return, you're taken right to the spot you were last reading instead of having to choose the book again as you do in Classics. I also like how the Kindle reader hides the iPhone status bar (the bar at the top showing signal type and strength and battery charge).
Tapping the screen brings up your icon options, including a back arrow, bookmark plus sign, Go to (the icon looks like an open book), font size, and refresh. Bookmarking is simple: Just click the plus sign, and you'll see a dog-ear at the top-right corner of the current page. Tap the dog-ear to remove the bookmark. If you've made notes on your Kindle and associated them with the bookmark, they'll appear, but there doesn't seem to be a way to enter notes using the iPhone.
The open-book icon takes you to the book's table of contents, cover, beginning, location, or your bookmarks. Location is like a page number, only because you can change the font size, pages could contain different amounts of text. Locations stay the same no matter what text size you choose, so they're handy for finding passages. A slider control below the control icons lets you quickly zip ahead and back in the text, also handy for navigating around a large tome.
Reader's Choice?
Kindle for iPhone is a mixed bag. The ability to buy any current hot title (and a vast back catalog) is a huge selling point, and the app is free. My rating for Kindle for iPhone is higher than it would be for just the software, because of the excellent book selection. I only wish that the reader interface were as esthetically satisfying as that of Classics or as customizable as Stanza's.
More iPhone App Reviews: