Android App Review – Amazon Kindle

Book purists probably won’t like this – or at least, that’s what they’ll maintain, before they try it. I’m one of them; I’m all about the quality of the paper, the binding, the smell of the print. “Why the hell would I read a book on the screen when I can hold the real thing in my hands?” Cost, that’s the first consideration. E-books can be as much as 25%-50% cheaper than paperback books. And then there’s clutter. How many of us can honestly hold up our hands and say we’ve ever re-read a pop-fiction book once it was finished and thrown on a shelf somewhere to collect dust? Kindle removes the clutter. Finish a book and save it, or delete it and move on. Simple and clutter free.

Fair enough, these are easy concerns to overcome. But what about the actual cost of a Kindle reader? For me, that was the biggest obstruction to trying the whole E-book thing. Fair enough, the Kindle device is quite reasonably priced, but at over £100, it’s still quite a chunk of change in these recession-hit times. Then I got my Android phone and Amazon released the free Kindle app. And what an eye-opener it proved.

Image via Wikipedia

Now I can carry books around on my Desire and read them any time. I know what you’re thinking: “You can’t read whole books on a screen that small.” You’d probably have a point if the Kindle reader was like any other PDF or E-book reader you’ve ever tried – you know the type of thing: they seem like a good idea until you discover that you can’t scale the page to sensible, legible size; books are impossible to find for it, etc.

Kindle offers superb display options that allow you to resize the font, adjust the display brightness, change the colour of the page, and view the page in portrait or landscape format.

So readability isn’t an issue, in fact it’s as clear as you’d like. Another great side to the Kindle is its reference and annotation tools. Simply highlight any word or phrase and link direct to Dictionary.com or Wikipedia to look it up. You can also bookmark any page for later reference. Simply use the Kindle’s ‘Goto’ function to navigate to saved bookmarks. You can even write your own notes on any page.

‘Whispersync’ makes it possible for you to read the same book on several Kindle devices (registered with your account) and never lose your page when switching from device to device. This is indeed a feature-rich app that delivers the joy of reading direct to your pocket. You’ll never be without a book again . . . and when you do finish a book, navigating to the Kindle shop and downloading your next read couldn’t be easier. Give Ebooks a chance; I reckon you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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