Kindle for iPhone review

The Kindle 2 seems to be an amazing device, but not everyone has the luxury of actually affording one. However, Amazon decided that they would extend the privilege of the Kindle platform to the owners of the next convenient ebook reader: the iPhone and iPod Touch, which made its debut March 3, 2009.

Even though the Kindle for iPhone app is a way to read Kindle books on Apple’s iPhone OS, it is far from being a Kindle itself. E-ink, annotation, and text-to-speech are the main features that won’t magically appear just because of the iPhone app. Despite these features, the Kindle for iPhone app is still a great way to get introduced to the Kindle platform or even use it as a companion to your Kindle 2.

The main thing about the Kindle for iPhone app or the Kindle device is that books will be delivered directly to the device after purchasing Kindle format books from Amazon. When buying books from Amazon’s site, you’ll have the option to choose what device to sync it to, as long as you’ve already input your login information on a Kindle, or iPhone or iPod Touch. These digital books will be delivered wirelessly to the chosen device in about sixty seconds.



If you own a Kindle device, the Whispersync technology will be able to detect where you last left off on a device, and sync the bookmark with another device if you choose to switch between a Kindle and an iPhone or iPod Touch. For example, if you leave a bookmark on your Kindle 2 and then decide to switch to your iPhone, Whispersync technology will detect your account and then a message will pop up asking if you want to jump forward to the latest bookmark in the e-book. This allows seamless transitioning from multiple devices and reduces hassle of finding that spot you left off at.

Even if you do not own a Kindle, the iPhone app serves fine as a standalone e-book reader as well. The home screen will show you all of your Kindle books that you have bought and downloaded from Amazon’s Kindle bookstore and you can sort them by Most Recent, Title, or Author. In addition to having your entire collection of Kindle books, you can choose to delete any ones you’ve finished or just don’t want anymore via the Edit button. It is not possible to browse and purchase for new books within the app itself yet, however, so you would have to visit the Amazon Kindle Store via a web browser or even from Mobile Safari.

When viewing a book, you can quickly access various checkpoints throughout the book such as the Cover, Table of Contents, Beginning, or even pick a page to jump to with Location. Tap the screen to bring up the menu bars or dismiss them. Swipes of the finger left or right will go to previous page or to the next page, rather than physical buttons like the actual Kindle. There are also five font sizes to choose from, so you can pick the best size that suits your eyes.

The interface is not as fancy as other iPhone e-book readers, but this is a good option for a free book reader on the iPhone. It’s easy and simple to use, and in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?

The Kindle for iPhone app is versatile either way as a Kindle companion or a standalone iPhone/iPod Touch e-book reader even if it lacks cool features like the real thing. Perhaps annotation and text-to-speech would be possible in the future depending on software updates and also Apple for the technology of copy & paste for marking annotations. But for a 1.0, it really is not a bad app at all. We can only look forward to great improvements in the future for the Kindle iPhone app.

For the price tag of free, there is no loss here, so consider giving Amazon’s Kindle a chance on your iPhone or iPod Touch.