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Despite the initial problems a few of us had this morning getting Kindle for the iPhone to actually register our iPhone with the Amazon Kindle Store, we finally managed to get the application installed and purchased a few titles, so we thought we’d write a review of the application for you, highlighting the good and bad points of the application. There are two main reasons why anyone with an iPhone, iPhone 3G or iPod touch should install this free application whether you own a Kindle, a Kindle 2, or not. First, it opens up your Apple device to a whole marketplace filled with books for reading on the go, immediately adding the value and power that the Kindle Store lends to the Kindle itself to the entire Apple line of portable media devices. Secondly, it works with Amazon’s Whispersync so that all the titles you purchase are available for download from the Kindle Store, where you were last when you were reading a book is remembered, and, perhaps most importantly for Kindle owners or potential Kindle owners, it allows you to sync the same book between multiple devices, so that you can read a few pages while you’re on the train with your small and always-in-your-pocket iPhone and pick up where you left off when you pick up your Kindle at home before bed. Nevertheless, there are some very noticeable weaknesses of this new application that should be kept in mind and that we hope will soon be fixed by Amazon in an upcoming update.

Figures 1 & 2: Initial Registration Screen and How to Get Books screen

After first installing the Kindle for iPhone application on the iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll need to launch the application and register the iPhone or iPod touch with your Amazon account via the screen featured in Figure 1 above. After doing so, if you already have an active Kindle account, all your previously purchased books can be downloaded via the Archived Items folder that appears on the Home screen (See Figure 4 below).

If you have never had a Kindle before, then you will be returned to an empty menu screen with a button at the top left that reads “Get Books.” However, clicking on that link does little more than take you to the informational screen featured in Figure 2 above, which advises you to purchase books via your Mac or PC or to optionally use Safari Mobile on the iPhone or iPod touch. The word Safari here links directly to the Amazon Kindle Store and launches Mobile Safari, so that you can immediately purchase books to then be synced with your various Kindle-capable devices.

This is where we ran into our problems before when we were told that we didn’t have any devices registered. If this happens to you, you can access the Info screen (Figure 3 below) by clicking on the i in the bottom right corner of the Home screen (Figure 4 below), and try deregistering and then reregistering your device. If that fails to work, as it failed to work for us, you can also choose the Contact Support link to send an email to Amazon. We did this and shortly thereafter the problem was fixed, however, we’re not sure if this was because of contacting support or if it was just a coincidence as we have not yet received an email back from Amazon support.

One point you should keep in mind, however, is that magazine and newspaper subscriptions do not currently work with the Kindle for iPhone application. Every time we tried to subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, even after our initial problems with the service were resolved, we were met with the same message noting that we didn’t have a Kindle-compatible device registered. This is something that we hope Amazon will rectify with a future update of the software, and we’d love to hear from any Kindle owners with existing subscriptions to magazines or newspapers about what they think of the lack of this support on the iPhone and iPod touch.

Overall, the experience of having to leave the Kindle for iPhone application in order to shop for new items with no clear explanation on Amazon’s site itself for what is and what is not Kindle for iPhone compatible is one of the glaring problems with this application. Apple has both the iTunes Store and the App Store applications which make shopping for things to add to the iPhone or iPod touch a breeze, and considering how much the shopping experience on the Kindle itself is touted, we were surprised that there isn’t a similar store section to the application for browsing and purchasing titles. It’s especially odd given that Amazon offers an Amazon.com Application for the iPhone that allows one to purchase all kinds of Amazon products. Unfortunately, one cannot purchase books from the Amazon Kindle Store using this application either. Perhaps this is a limitation imposed by Apple themselves, but we hope that Amazon figures out a way to add a mobile Kindle Store to the next generation of this application, as the current shopping experience is cumbersome to say the least.

Figures 3 & 4: Information screen and main menu screen

After we finally managed to get some titles on our iPhone, we discovered Kindle for iPhone relatively easy to navigate. Titles purchased are synced to the device readily enough by hitting the refresh button in the bottom left corner of the main menu screen (pictured in Figure 4 above). Also, as previously noted, if you’ve previously purchased items on the Kindle Store for your Kindle or Kindle 2, you can access those items via the Archived Items folder. Touching on a book’s title opens that book in the application at the last page you had the book opened in Kindle for iPhone. If you happen to have read more of the book on another Kindle-compatible device since the last time you opened it on your Apple device, simply tapping the middle of the screen to bring up the bottom menu bar (Figure 5 below) and tapping on the Whispersync icon on the far right of the bar will sync Kindle for iPhone with the last page you were reading according to Amazon’s servers.

Along the bottom of the screen there is a drag-able button that can help you skip forwards and backwards through the book. Both pictures and text show up clearly in Kindle for iPhone and you can hit the Aa text size button in the menu to adjust the font size of the text between five different sizes. In the middle of the menu bar is a book icon that brings up all the bookmarks in the book (whether your own or ones that are default to the book), and just to the left of that icon is a plus sign that will add a bookmark for the page you are currently reading. HItting the bookmark button adds a dog-ear to the upper right hand corner of the page you are currently reading, and you can remove the bookmark by simply tapping the dog-ear at which point it will disappear.

Figures 5 & 6: Menu bar and active link in text

In order to turn pages, you don’t have to access the menu bar at the bottom at all. You simply use your finger to drag pages to the left to move forward page by page and to drag pages to the right to move backwards page by page. For some reason, although paging forward is rather swift and easy, paging backwards results in a temporarily blank screen from time to time, so it disrupts the reading experience somewhat. Also, as you can see in Figure 6 above, certain parts of the book can show up as links and link to different sections of the book. Here, for example, PRELUDE links to PRELUDE in the table of contents, so you can quickly jump back to the table of contents and then to another section.

Figures 7 & 8: Cannot resize image pages and a possible error

The biggest disappointment regarding the Kindle for iPhone application is how it avoids taking advantage of many of the features of the iPod and the iPhone touch that all iPhone and iPod touch users have become very used to. The font size menu is nice to have, but the application should also support zooming in and zooming out the text size by a simple multi-touch pinch and squeeze movements that we’re all already familiarized with. This becomes vitally important in image-heavy texts like the City of Glass graphic novel pictured in Figures 7 and 8 above. The pages of the graphic novel do not zoom or respond to changing the text display size and since there is no multi-touch zoom support the money I spent on the graphic novel was entirely wasted as it is too small to be read. For a moment, I thought that I would be able to simply turn the iPhone on its side and switch to landscape view, but unfortunately, that’s when I discovered that the Kindle for iPhone application only supports portrait mode. Since this is the case, Obsessable warns strongly against purchasing any Manga or Graphic Novels for reading on the Kindler for iPhone until Amazon updates the software. Also, as you can see above in Figure 7, there is an empty thought bubble, and I’m not sure if that is intentional or a Kindle-conversion error.

What’s missing / what do we hope to see in future versions?

There are a few glaring errors or omissions that we hope to see rectified very soon:

• An integrated method for purchasing titles from the Kindle Store.
• Support for purchasing subscriptions or at the very least some warning on the store that they are not compatible with the Kindle for iPhone application.
• Support for the iPhone and iPod touches multi-touch zoom in and zoom out functions or an alternate zoom function for image-based titles. At the very least, they should warn people purchasing Graphic Novels or Manga on the Kindle Store that these titles won’t play nicely with the Kindle for iPhone application.
• Support for landscape view.
• Improved page turning when flipping back through pages.

Obsessable Recommendation

Despite the multiple problems that we encountered while testing this application, it is free and it does open up a whole world of content for the iPhone and iPod touch that wasn’t there before. Those two reasons should convince everyone who enjoys reading to install the application, although keep in mind the caveats listed above, and please contact Amazon and let them know what of the features mentioned above you’d like to see in the application (simply use the Provide Feedback link on the Info screen pictured in Figure 3 above). Obsessable hopes that this application is the first step in some good things from Amazon for the iPhone and iPod touch.

by C.K. Sample III

\\ tags: iPhone