Hands-On With Kindle For iPhone

Amazon released Kindle for iPhone today in the Apple App store, which means anyone who doesn’t own a Kindle but wants to get in on the e-reader frenzy, can simply download the free app and get started reading on their phone. For anyone that owns a Kindle, it’s an easy way to view your books and other purchases directly from your iPhone thanks to Amazon’s Whispersync technology.

We installed the app and then logged in using our Amazon account. Immediately under the “Archived” section we saw our previously purchased books beginning to download. Each book has a small stamp-sized icon of the cover art, and the author and title are displayed next to it.

You can buy books from your iPhone, but not inside the app itself, which we think is odd. Instead, you’ll have to launch the Safari browser or download them from your PC by visiting Amazon.com/ Kindlestore.

We tried reading Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, but found it a bit awkward on such a small screen. It’s fun turning pages with the swipe of a finger but you’ll find yourself turning pages frequently since the iPhone can only display what would amount to a paragraph of a real book on each page. Thankfully you can toggle between five text sizes to help you fit more text on a page.

If you touch the screen while you’re reading, a menu will pop up. The menu lets you save notes and marks, skip to the books cover, view the table of contents, or jump to a specific location within the book.

We liked using the Kindle 2 for casual reading, but we can’t see ourselves using the iPhone as an e-reader much. It’s perfect for quickly jumping to notes or for reading a few pages briefly, but we’d prefer reading from an actual book or the Kindle any day.

Our hands-on video and gallery are below.