I just finished reading “Communicating for a Change” by Andy Stanley. I read the entire book on my iPhone using the Kindle application. Here’s my review so far of the app. Maybe later I’ll give you my thoughts on the book.
3 Things I Love about the Kindle App:
- Availability of Books/number of titles/cost of books: They say that there are over 245,000 titles available. Since I can’t just go to the bookstore and pick up the latest books, I can at least browse the kindle store and buy the books I’d like to read.
- Ease of download/use: Within 60 seconds after buying the book on Amazon, I can download it to my iphone. There’s no waiting for it to be shipped to my house. It’s automatically there.
- Location – my iphone is always with me: I’ve always got my phone with me, so I can always have a book with me. I can read anywhere.
3 Things I Hate about the Kindle App:
- No easy way to comment or write notes: I like to write notes or comments about the things I’m reading, but this isn’t very easy with the Kindle app. I would love it if they had a way to write notes in the app itself and then email myself the notes I took on the book. It’s not even that easy to bookmark pages for future reference. It puts some weird location thing on it, making it difficult to really know what bookmark is what (click the picture to the side to see what I’m talking about).
- A little hard on the eyes: After reading for a while, my eyes were really tired from looking at the screen. You can change the size of the font, but I think it has to do with the lighting of the screen.
- Use of gestures instead of just tapping to turn the pages: In order to turn the page (which you do a lot because of the size of the screen), you have to swipe the screen. I’d rather just tap one side of the screen (like you can do on the Stanza app). It would be easier and cut down on the carpel tunnel syndrome I’m bound to get.
3 Things I wish they would add or Change:
- A search feature: Sometimes I remember something I read, but I can’t remember exactly what or where it was. I wish there was a way to search the book on the Kindle app. That would make it easier to look up things that I want to use later.
- Notes feature or a way to organize bookmarks: If I had a better way to organize the things I found interesting in the book, it would be a better app.
- Better page numbering system: For some reason I like to look at the number of pages that I’ve read or the number of pages that are left in the book. I would love to see the Kindle app let me know those things in a language I can understand, instead of some weird location system that they are using now.
Overall, I like the application, and I’m looking forward to reading more books on it. There are always improvements that could be made, but I’m happy with my experience so far with the Kindle App for my iPhone.
