Here's my Android Kindle App review as promised:
When first run, you are shown a login/register screen. It says for Amazon.com, but I entered my Amazon.co.uk credentials and it picked up my account.
Once into the app, you go into the menu and select Kindle Store. Oddly, this opens in a browser window, rather than through the app.
On the browser page, you can select any of the following options:
Browse Books by Category
Kindle Bestsellers
New & Noteworthy
Free Popular Classics
Recommended for You
For this mini review, I selected to grab a freebie classic. This takes you to another page that just looks like a mobile version of the Amazon site, all very familiar. As per the site, you can filter books by price, popularity, bestselling etc.
I chose Dracula as my book. After clicking on the "Buy Now" button (which showed a zero cost), I was frustratingly taken to a sign in page. So, even after entering my credentials in the Kindle app, I had to do it again on this page. Hmm.
Once signed in (again), I get to another page offering to send the book to my HTC Desire. Nice. I presume the app detected which phone I'm using. The book now begins to download in the background while I can either continue shopping or return to the Kindle app. I'll just add here that my Desire is already connected to my home Internet connection via wifi, which was all transparently picked up by the Kindle app.
Going back to the Kindle app home screen and.... no book yet. Ahh, I'm downloading on the PC! I pause the download and wait with baited breath for Dracula to appear...I must admit, I'd have preferred some kind of progress bar or something here. The Kindle store allowed the transaction and informed me that the book would be downloaded and automatically sent to my Kindle app, but I have no way of telling how far it's got or how long it will take. So, I wait.
Ok, nothing is happening after 5 minutes waiting, so I begin fiddling with the app menu. There's an "Archived Items" menu which has a comment "To download books you already own, select Archived Items from the Menu". Ok, I'll bite. Yep, in Archived Items, I have a copy of Dracula! Now, that's a bit confusing to say the least. The Kindle store says the book will be added to the app Home screen. Yet, in the app, you have to go into Archived Items to see the book, NOT the home screen.
Clicking on the book and guess what? Yes, it begins to download! I think someone needs to check this app for consistency. While downloading, I am shown some helpful reading tips. THings like "Tap in the margins or flick to turn pages" and "Touch and hold over text to add notes, highlights, and more".
Finally, into the book and I'm looking at a plain white background with a nice, large serif font with Chapter One displayed. As the Desire screen resolution is so high for the screen size, the text looks lovely. It's very crisp and clean looking and easy on the eyes. Entering the menu, I can change the font size to one of 5 different sizes and pick a background of white, sepia or black (which also changes the font to white). The sizes are good, although you'd need really bad eyesight to need the largest size and you're only getting something like 40-50 words on screen, so it would require a lot of flicking to get through any book! The smallest is fine for me.
In terms of config, this is where the Kindle app has a long way to go to contend with FBReader. If I want to read with the white background in a dark room, it would be far too stark and bright to be comfortable with the Kindle app. With FBReader, I can change the font and background colours to anything I want. I can swipe my finger down the left side of the screen to alter the brightness (just in the app itself), change fonts, hyphenation, margins, scrollbar and footer settings, text scrolling method and more. The Kindle app can handle bookmarks and when you highlight text, you can add notes and even search Wikipedia online for whatever you have highlighted. How useful this is, I don't know.
Quitting and reopening the Kindle app has forced Dracula to the home screen. So, it seems you have to actually open a book before it downloads to your phone. The other failing of the Kindle app is that if you have a lot of books, you can't really do anything other than have a long list on the home screen and sort them by author, title or most recent. FBReader automatically puts books into virtual folders according to the author's name, which makes navigating dozens of books (like I have) very easy and quick.
So, in conclusion. The Android Kindle app is a mixed bag really. Once you get a book into the app, it's nice enough to read with. I think the process you have to go through to get books onto the phone is far from intuitive though and could be very confusing to some. It needs many more features before I'd consider using it regularly. But, the real killer for me is to do with book formats. Kindle is limited to what Amazon supplies and in their proprietary format. FBReader et al enables me to grab books from anywhere I like, in any format and will just display them without restriction or complaint. This is the dealbreaker for me with Kindle the app, and the device itself.
Anyway, I hope this helps you make a decision. I'd really recommend Android as a platform for reading ebooks on, partly because of its open nature, but also because of the choice you have of formats and book reading software.
All the best,
Leaston
