Review: Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone/iPod Touch
As I promised in this earlier post, here’s my review of the Amazon Kindle app I recently added to my iPhone (1st gen).
Download/Installation
No problems here. The Kindle app downloaded nicely onto my iPhone and I was able to open it up after it finished installing. No crashes. No glitches that I was able to detect. Par for the course.
The Kindle app is free, and so is my new ebook reader of choice Stanza, so they are both tied in this category.
Price
I decided to buy William Lashner’s Marked Man as a test book. Why? Because I’ve read a few other of Lashner’s books and have really enjoyed them, and I wanted something light and entertaining to test drive the Kindle app on.
The price I paid on Amazon’s Kindle store was $6.39. The same book on Fictionwise is $7.99. But, if you are a member of the Fictionwise Reward Program, you get 15% off ($1.20), which brings the price on Fictionwise down to $6.79. Not that big of a price difference, but Amazon is still cheaper on this one. I suppose if you buy a lot of books, the difference can quickly add up. Score one for Amazon.
I should note that the Fictionwise Rewards Program is basically signing
up for their free newsletter. You can read more details about it here.
Just for comparison purposes, the price of the print edition is $7.99 on Amazon and $5.98 on the Barnes & Noble website (who recently purchased Fictionwise, I might add).
Ease of use
The Kindle app doesn’t let you buy directly from the app on the iPhone/iPod Touch, as it does on the actual Kindle. Not a big deal for me, but might be an annoyance to others. However, I also have the regular Amazon iPhone app, and was also unable to buy the ebook version from there. That annoyed me.
Thus I had to open up the Safari browser and go to the Kindle Store on Amazon’s regular website and buy the ebook from there. The transaction itself was very simple and I didn’t even have to enter my credit card number in. By itself that is scary – I could easily go on an ebook buying binge and spend way too much!
After the ebook had been successfully purchased, I closed out Safari and opened the Kindle app again. As soon as I opened it, the book began to load onto the iPhone. Since I was on my home WiFi network, it loaded in a matter of seconds. If I had been out and about using AT&T’s Edge network (I have a 1st generation iPhone, remember?) it would have taken much longer.
Once the book was loaded it showed up in my library, and when I touched it, the book opened to the first page and I’m ready to read!
Reading experience
After playing around with the settings, I read a few pages of my newly purchased novel. The reading experience on the Kindle app is much like that on Fictionwise’s eReader or the Stanza, with a few notable exceptions.
First, there is no "landscape" view for reading (unless I totally missed something). I usually prefer to read in landscape as it makes the iPhone more comfortable to hold. By itself, however, this is no deal breaker.
Second, the Kindle App requires a fairly long swipe with the finger to turn the pages. This is opposed to Stanza where I just tap to move on to the next page. The eReader app only requires a small swipe, or, the settings can be changed so all you have to do is tap. The longer swipe will probably become cumbersome, especially during a long reading session.
Third, there are several choices for text size. This is great, especially when your eyes are a little tired you can make the text pretty big. But this is something the other apps also feature, so it’s not new.
Finally, overall the Kindle app doesn’t give the user nearly the amount of setting as Stanza does. I guess that’s because Amazon intends people to use this for quick reading sessions, when it may not be convenient to carry the Kindle 2 around with them.
Final thoughts
The Kindle app for the iPhone/iPod Touch is good, but not spectacular. I can’t predict how often I’ll use it, but I’m guessing that will depend on where I can find the best price on ebooks.
With a few updates and added features, this app can really give Stanza and eReader a run for their money, especially given the large number of books Amazon has available. However, I’m not sure that will happen. Amazon still wants people to buy the actual Kindle device for a majority of their reading, so I have a gut feeling that this app will always be lacking. Think about it: If they made their app too good, who’d buy the Kindle?
Another reason I don’t see Amazon putting the Stanza ebook reading app to rest is because the Kindle app is really only good for books bought on Amazon. With Stanza, the user has a lot more options for many different formats. And in the end, I think ebook readers want choices and the freedom to "shop around".
Does anyone out there have the Amazon app for the iPhone/iPod Touch? If so leave a comment below with your thoughts and impressions. I always love hearing what others have to say!
Related posts
- Amazon finally releases iPhone/iPod Touch app for e-reading
- Review: eReader app for iPhone
- Barnes & Noble releases free iPhone app (review included)
- 5 reasons why Stanza might be my iPhone ebook app of choice
- Amazon releases Kindle 2
Read More: Reading, Technology
I love my Kindle, but if the iPhone app had been around back in November of 2007, I wouldn’tve bought the hardware reader, just stuck with the iPhone app. I’ve read 1.5 novels in the Kindle app, and 3-4 via Bookshelf, and am perfectly happy with the reading experience, although like you, I’d like a landscape mode, too.
The book files are so small that you won’t notice much of a difference downloading them via EDGE vs. WiFi, FYI. I’ve a 3G iPhone, but even in areas where I only have EDGE coverage, grabbing the book files is quick.
I’ve been waiting for an iPhone/iPod touch based Kindle reader for a while. I’ve been an ereader.com user for the last 5-6 years or so and have hundreds of books first on my Tungsten E, and then on my iPod touch. But there were always books I couldn’t get that WERE available for the Kindle.
…sigh. And cheaper, too. Consarn it. Now I HAVE to have two apps on my touch. But considering I’m happily reading Mistborn book 2 for the first time on my iPod touch, AKA the best PDA on the planet…I’m not complaining too much.
Everyone wins! I just hope, for ereader/fictionwise’s sake, that they do some pricedropping to match Amazon.com. $24.99 for Dune Messiah vs Amazon.com’s MUCH more reasonable paperback price is just…scary.
I was using Stanza before Kindle for iPhone came out. Amazon’s books are cheaper, sometimes by a long shot. Take “An Inconvenient Book” by Glenn Beck. At Amazon Kindle Store it is $14.30 whereas Stanza Fictionwise it is running $22.10, only after the rewards program.
I have the Amazon store app. I cannot buy Kindle books through their own app. It says “This mobile application does not currently support digital downloads. Add this item to your Wish List and you can view and purchase it from you computer.”
A major feature missing in Kindle for iPhone is the ability to change the colors of the background and text font. Fortunately, Kindle uses a nice off white/cream color with black Times New Roman(?) text.
[...] really groundbreaking in the announcement. In fact, the app seems a lot like the Amazon iPhone app. So I guess it’s no surprise that B&N would want to cash in on the mobile computing [...]
Hello
with stanza and ebook reader you can read your
“own” books, but alas not in mobi format so far.
Kindle supports mobi, but how can I copy/download my books on the
ipod touch so that kindle finds them.
Anybody has an idea?
thanks
Uwe Brauer
The question of reading personal documents I could solve:
officially you can’t, but unofficially you can.
What is missing however seems to be a search function.
One of the crucial advantages of an ebook is the ability of searching text. A reader without this feature seems to me like a car without wheels.
Uwe Brauer
I’m very happy to see a decent Kindle reader for the iPhone, mostly because I make a living writing science fiction eBooks and I have a number of faithful readers who are switching from phones that use Mobipocket to iPhones. Thankfully all my books are available on Kindle, so they can load the Kindle reader up and continue being a reader.
I’d like to see a few improvements to the Kindle reader, but from what I’ve seen and heard they have a good start.
Randolph Lalonde
http://www.randolphlalonde.com
Here’s how you use Mobipocket books on your Kindle with DRM: (1)Install Kindle on your iPhone. (2)Get the Kindle PID (it won’t tell you, you have to run a script). (3)Go back to where you obtained your eBooks and get new versions containing DRM for the PID of your iPhone. (4)Run the new PRC files through a script which will make them readable by Kindle. (6)Copy the files across to your iPhone and start reading. Here are the scripts.
http://rapidshare.com/files/215202363/Mobipocket_DRM_Tools.zip
Enjoy!
I’m using the Kindle app, which I just downloaded today. There is a landscape view, there is a choice of a sepia font, and I can turn the pages with a tap. I guess there have been some upgrades since this review was written.
I’m very happy with this app. I can now read my Kindle books in bed in the middle of the night without a reading light!
I like the application. What worries me is that I can’t back my purchases onto my iMac, or if there is a way I’m unaware of it. I like the highlight features and bookmarking. Wish it had a ‘dictionary/thesarus function attached to it. So far, I would give it a 3 1/2 stars our of 5.
Can anyone tell me how to do get a mobi-format book, which I downloaded from gutenberg.org to my Kindle 2, from the Kindle 2 to my iPod Kindle app. I know I can download the book independently from gutenberg to my iPod, but I’d like Kindle to know about it in order to be able to synch back and forth between the versions on the two devices.
Thanks in advance.
You could try mobipocket creator, which you can get from their official site – create a non DRM mobipocket format book using the gutenberg text file. You can even add cover art and whatever metatdata you need. I havent tried this myself but did read it elsewhere. Worth a shot. Gutenberg is a great resource, and we shouldnt need to fork out anything for public domain classics IMO.
Astroy7–
Why would I use MobipocketCreator to create a mobipocket-format version of the gutenberg text-file when I already acquired the mobipocket-format version available on gutenberg?
your review is very informative, thank you for you work, now I know much more!!
Stanza has been my primary eBook reader for the last year and I’m quite happy with it. But the pull of Amazon’s large and reasonably priced book selection took it’s toll. Amazon’s Kindle app found its way onto my iPod Touch.
My initial impression is that the Kindle app doesn’t give the user the level of control over an ebook’s presentation that Stanza does. Using the Kindle app, it is mildly annoying that one has no choice of font or control over the page margins. Since the only font provided is a serif font (looks like Times New Roman), one has to use larger text to maintain readability.
Using Stanza, my font of choice has settled on Arial, with a point size just large enough to be comfortably readable. Since the Touch has such a small screen, having minimal margins (or none what-so-ever) makes sense. Tuning Amazon’s Kindle app with the settings available yields somewhere between half and a third of the readable text that my preferred settings with Stanza yield.
The difference is stark enough that I tend to pay the extra money to get ebooks that are readable with Stanza. Since most of my book choices available for free, this doesn’t add up to much over a year. However, now that ebooks are my primary medium, I am definitely beginning to buy more of them.
It is my suspicion that a future version of the Kindle app will include a choice of fonts and allow for adjustable margins. Unless Stanza is able to read DRMed ebooks bought through Amazon or the ebook prices at BooksOnBoard or some other provider of Stanza-readable ebooks appear, I’ll likely dump Stanza in favour of the Kindle at that point. This is a shame because the choice of ebook providers that Stanza provides really does appeal to me. However, it is hard to pay much more for a similar reading experience.