Amazon Releases Kindle Application for iPhone

The app is a free download, and lets you read Amazon’s proprietary Kindle e-books on your iPhone. The Kindle app doesn’t have an interface to the Kindle Store; instead, you buy books (or add free samples) to your account on Amazon’s Kindle web store, then when you next launch the Kindle iPhone app, it downloads any new content in your account. You can get free sample chapters of books, so it’s easy to try without spending a dime.

Kicking it around for a few minutes, it’s not bad. Pagination is a bit tiresome, though — you have to slide your finger or thumb across the screen to turn the page. Magnetism’s iPhone edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has a far better pagination UI — you just tap the side of the page. Makes a big difference for an action you have to repeat hundreds of times.

★ Wednesday, 4 March 2009