[barryem]

I got a Fire Phone yesterday and I've been playing with that scrolling feature in the Kindle app. It's far from perfect but it works a lot better than I expected. I find it pretty usable. I'd be happy if I could adjust it a bit more.

I don't want constant scrolling so I tilt the screen back a little when a little scrolling is needed and then I straighten it out again. That's simple and effortless and requires no more thought than swiping or tapping to turn pages, although the novelty of it is still a bit distracting. I'm pretty sure I'll get used to that.

What I find myself doing a lot is just reaching up with a finger to slide the page up a bit, rather than tilting back. That's what I'm accustomed to doing with Moon+ so it feels natural to me. And the scrolling is far smoother and more controllable in this app than in Moon+. I have Moon+ on board so I have compared.

The problems, as I see them, are first, that when the thing is perpendicular to my face it's just about ready to scroll backward, so I have to avoid that. That also means I have to tilt back pretty far to scroll forward. I'd love to be able to adjust the center relative to my head.

This is a pretty minor thing. I still find this kind of a nice way to read.

Another problem is that I can't turn off the tilt/scroll feature without turning off scrolling entirely, forcing me to page. If I could manually scroll instead of tilting I'd be pretty happy.

For a while I couldn't figure out why I liked scrolling so much better than page turning but now that I've been thinking about it a while I think it's because near the end of the page I have to force myself not to swipe yet, and that's a bit distracting. With a paper book when I got near the page end my fingers had a grip on the corner of the page and at the end the page was already lifted, giving myself as smooth a transition to the next page as possible. Ereaders, being digital, turn when I touch so I have to keep my finger away and I want to start ahead of time and I can't.

Anyway I find that when I scroll I do it ahead of time and the part I'm reading is between the top and the center of the page. I sort of keep it there. Its a major improvement for me, leading to faster and more enjoyable reading and, I think, better absorption.

Overall I'm disappointed in the Fire Phone. Everything works well but it's not really very intuitive and a lot of things don't work the way I'd like them to work. I'm pretty sure I'll get used to it but it could be a lot better. I think I'll probably keep it because of the scrolling Kindle app. I really do like that.

Barry