First Impressions of Kindle on iPhone

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 07:02:37 +0000

As I predicted in my review of Amazon.com’s Kindle 2 e-book reader last week, the giant bookseller has moved quickly to make the 240,000 book Kindle catalog available on other devices. On Tuesday night, the first Kindle software reader appeared, and it’s a free iPhone app. Called Kindle for iPhone, the app replicates the basic book-reading functions of the hardware Kindle device, and can be thought of as a complement to that device, which has more features. However, you don’t have to own a hardware Kindle to use this app. You can now choose instead to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as the reader for books from Kindle’s catalog.

I tried the new iPhone Kindle app moments after it became available on Apple’s App Store (AAPL), and my first impression is generally positive. But first, let me note the key features of the hardware Kindle that aren’t carried over to the iPhone app. It doesn’t support periodicals. It doesn’t read books aloud. It doesn’t allow you to enter notes or highlight text, look up words in a dictionary, or perform searches.

And, if you wish to purchase a new e-book, the Kindle app sends you over to the iPhone’s Safari Web browser to go the Amazon (AMZN) Web site; it lacks a built-in Kindle store.

However, it is a solid basic app for reading books, and is especially valuable if you already own a hardware Kindle, as I do. In my brief tests, the iPhone app synchronized rapidly and perfectly with my purchased library of Kindle books on Amazon’s servers, and allowed me to retrieve a previously purchased e-book, without paying again, just as my hardware Kindle does. It also synchronized to the furthest page I had read in that book on my Kindle. After reading for awhile on the iPhone, I performed that process in reverse, and my Kindle took me to the same spot where I had quit reading on the iPhone.

This means that, if I were in line at the grocery store with my iPhone, I could read a few pages of my book, and then, when I picked up my Kindle at home, I could continue reading, starting from the same spot.

I also was able to buy a new book using the iPhone’s Web bowser, and Amazon gave me a choice of auto-delivering it to either my Kindle or my iPhone, which it treats as just another Kindle. I did so, and it appeared very quickly. I later downloaded it as well to my Kindle.

Reading on the device was easy. You turn pages using the iPhone’s horizontal swiping gesture, and you can change the font size on the fly, and create bookmarks, which then can be synced back to a Kindle device. You can view any notes you made on a hardware Kindle. And there’s a slider to quickly go back and forth through chunks of the book.

The only flaw I encountered in my brief testing: if you turn pages too fast you get a fleeting blank page or two.

In two key respects, using the iPhone app seems superior to using a Kindle. First, the iPhone’s screen is brighter, and supports color, so book covers and illustrations in my test books looked much better on the iPhone than they did on the Kindle. Second, the iPhone is smaller and thus much more portable.

The new Kindle app isn’t as full-featured as some other e-reader apps for the iPhone, which do allow annotation, searching, and so forth. But it gets the job done and it gives you access to Amazon’s large catalog, which contains more popular and current commercial titles than other e-book sellers offer.

If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch owner who has yearned for a Kindle but balked at its $359 price, or a Kindle owner with an iPhone or Touch already, this new Kindle app is a good bet, even if it is bare-bones.

Amazon's Kindle 2 Improves the Good, Leaves Out the Bad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:02:07 +0000

Amazon.com has fixed the worst design flaws in the Kindle, its popular electronic-book reader, while maintaining the excellent book-buying experience that made the first Kindle model tolerable despite those problems.

This week, the company released the Kindle 2, a new version that is much thinner, a tad lighter and a bit taller. It has much more built-in memory, better navigation controls and a slightly improved screen. I’ve been testing the Kindle 2 for a few weeks and consider it a vast improvement over the first Kindle, released in late 2007, which was clumsy and annoying to use. Overall, I found the Kindle 2 to be a well-designed, satisfying piece of hardware.

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The new model carries the same relatively high $359 price tag as its predecessor, but it offers faster page rendering and 25% better battery life. The catalog of books available on both Kindles has now swelled from about 90,000 in 2007 to over 230,000 today, and titles still typically cost around $10. You can still subscribe to periodicals and blogs, and there is still a crude Web browser built in — but this gadget is mainly for reading books.

Like its predecessor, the new Kindle has a built-in cellular wireless modem that allows you to download books or update periodicals on the fly, without using a computer. As before, there is no monthly fee for this wireless service.

Most important, Amazon (AMZN) has remedied the most irritating flaws of the original model. It’s no longer easy to accidentally turn pages, because the page-turning buttons have been redesigned. You no longer have to reach around to the back of the device to turn it on or off. You no longer scroll through menus and text with an odd little wheel whose progress was only visible in a thermometer-like strip separate from the main window. And the book-like cover no longer falls off.

But the improvements in this dedicated e-book reader, while admirable, may pale beside Amazon’s next move. Amazon says it is working to make the Kindle e-book catalog available on other mobile devices, such as smart phones, that people already own. The online merchant, which is so secretive it makes Steve Jobs seem like Joe Biden, isn’t saying which devices will get the Kindle service or when. I would bet it will be sooner rather than later.

Amazon’s Kindle 2

This makes perfect sense. While the Kindle project has often been compared with Apple’s iPod, because both are hardware devices seamlessly connected to online-content stores, there is a fundamental difference. Apple (AAPL) offers content to sell hardware. Amazon offers the Kindle to sell content.

If, say, this electronic content were available not only on the Kindle reader, but via Kindle software apps on Apple’s iPhone or the BlackBerry, the e-book market could explode.

Meanwhile, Kindle’s design has gone from chunky and clunky to smooth and sleek. The power switch is now easily reachable on top of the device, and the all-important buttons for paging forward and backward through a book are now smaller — and work by pushing them firmly inward toward the screen instead of outward toward the edge of the device. This means they can no longer be easily activated by stray finger movements.

The weird thermometer system has been replaced by a little joystick that moves an on-screen cursor. The Home button is now large, and has been moved off the keyboard, which has been reduced in size, but is still quite usable.

The screen is the same 6-inch, high-resolution E-Ink display, which has a comforting contrast ratio for reading and uses battery power only when you turn the page. But, while it still can’t display color and still can’t be read in the dark, its gray-shade graphics are much more detailed.

The battery is now sealed in, but it is larger. Amazon claims you can read for four or five days with the wireless turned on, or up to two weeks with it turned off. In my tests, those claims proved true. I took the Kindle on a trip for a week with the wireless turned off and the battery indicator barely budged.

Memory has been greatly expanded, so you can store 1,500 books, up from 200, though you can no longer add extra memory.

There are also a few cool new features. The Kindle 2 looks up words in the dictionary automatically, as soon as you move the cursor to them. It can optionally read books aloud in a computer voice that’s surprisingly decent. And, if the wireless function is on, the Kindle service will remember the last page you read in a book and synchronize a second Kindle to that same place in the book.

There are some drawbacks. You still can’t organize your books into groups of your choice. Amazon now charges $29 for the cover, which was formerly free. And the Kindle still doesn’t work with some of the open e-book formats that other devices support.

But for serious book readers who are tired of toting around stacks of books and periodicals, the new Kindle is finally a pleasure to use.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

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First Impressions of Kindle on iPhone

Amazon's Kindle 2 Improves the Good, Leaves Out the Bad