Kindle for iOS v4.0

[AnemicOak]

When viewing collections they need to add a toggle to only see items on device I think. I don't necessarily want to see items that I've put in collections, but haven't downloaded to a particular device.

Originally Posted by Carmelreader

I love how the collections work! Maybe we will get this kind of collections on the Kindle itself.

The eInk based Kindles have had Collections for a long time. It is good to see them finally being ported to a Kindle app. The Kindle Fires have that terrible carousel thing that is a waste of space. I'm sure a lot of Fire users would rather have Collections.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by jswinden

The Collections is a nice addition. I haven't played with it much either, but I did notice that it brought in all the Collections I have had on the last few and current Kindles. That is really cool.

What I like is that when viewing a Collection, you see all of its members, whether they are on the device or not (check mark indicates that it is on-device). And you can add anything in your Kindle Library, it does not need to be on the device. Much more logical and useful than the implementation on Kindle (it seems it would be easy enough to port this behavior back to Kindle so you could for example add items in Cloud to a collection).

I also like it that Collections view is separate and distinct, and doesn't clutter up the other views.

However there appears no way to import collections created with the app to Kindles linked to your account (or other instances of the iOS app linked to your account). Also there is no List view or dynamic sorting in a Collection (you can manually drag the items into the order you prefer). Having only thumbnail images does not always give you enough information to be able to know what the item is without downloading and opening it.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

When viewing collections they need to add a toggle to only see items on device I think. I don't necessarily want to see items that I've put in collections, but haven't downloaded to a particular device.

To me it is better to have everything listed there. As opposed to how it is on Kindle where you have no idea what collection(s) your Cloud items are in.

If it is on the device it will have a check mark.

For example suppose I have a collection for a book series. I may not want all of the books on the device at the same time but I would want to view the entire list and be able to select the next book. On Kindle this is not possible: you only see the on-device items. And for this use case you can manually drag the collection items into the proper order.

The manual sorting would also be useful for maintaining a Want To Read list. Again why have all this content on the device until you are ready to read? But how useful to have the list handy?

There are some rough edges here (as noted in my earlier post) but I like it much better than how it works on Kindle.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by tomsem

To me it is better to have everything listed there. As opposed to how it is on Kindle where you have no idea what collection(s) your Cloud items are in.

I don't have a problem with that as an option, I just think there should be options to show or not show stuff not on the device. Kind of how Kobo does their shelves on their eInk devices where you can select "show all" or "show on eReader".

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I don't have a problem with that as an option, I just think there should be options to show or not show stuff not on the device. Kind of how Kobo does their shelves on their eInk devices where you can select "show all" or "show on eReader".

The Kindle App has this toggle for All Items and Books, so it's interesting that they don't have it for collections.

Unfortunately, they didn't change the only thing that really annoys me about the Kindle App, which is that the brightness slider is buried in a menu and looks like the location-in-book slider. I'd rather that be reversed, since I'm often fine tuning the brightness when I read at night...and because grabbing the wrong slider and traveling backwards or forwards hundreds of pages is annoying.

This is actually less of a problem with ios 7, since swiping up will give you quick access to the device's global brightness control. But I'd still rather use the control in the app.

The Kindle for iOS app would be nearly perfect IMO if they would FINALLY add very small margins (on iPhones) and the ability to add our own fonts. At the very least they should add the ability for it to display embedded fonts, an ability already available on many eInk Kindles and I think on Kindle Fires as well.

Even as is, it is still my go to app for reading because of the Amazon ecosystem that allows the best syncing between devices, computers, etc.

[49Kat]

I feel kind of silly that I hadn't noticed this sooner, but I've been reading on a kobo app lately. Anyway, I've just realized that I can't see any way to access one's bookmarks now in the kindle app. After the way Kindle spiffed up this app so nicely, adding the collections feature (love this, it's great!), I find it hard to believe they would mess up something so basic as bookmarks.

It's got to be something simple. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing here? Thanks!

Edited to add: Oh...it's the thing that looks like a page, third icon from the right at the top of the page. I was looking in a book where I have lots of highlight, so I didn't scroll through all of it sufficiently to find the bookmarks. So it's in "my notebook".