Kindle for iPhone? Get the Skinny on the Kindle iPhone App

Just a week after shipping out the Kindle 2, Amazon also launched its Kindle iPhone app in early March. The move created a big buzz within the gadget-hooked community, with the free Kindle for iPhone topping the App Store’s list of free apps since its release, prompting even more buyers for the Kindle 2.

So, what’s so great about the new Kindle for iPhone? Take a look at this video that walks you through this new app.

First, it’s like having your Kindle right in your iPhone. Even if you think the Kindle is a great way of carrying all your books with you wherever you go, sometimes even that can be too much when you’re just waiting in line for your coffee or having a short bus ride. The Kindle iPhone app allows you to catch a few pages of reading when you just don’t want to miss out on the suspense, even while your Kindle is perfect for those lazy Sunday afternoons when you can do hours of uninterrupted reading.

The Kindle iPhone app also lets you access all your Kindle books in your iPhone even without the Kindle with you. Just access your Amazon account, choose from any of your Kindle purchases stored there (even all of them), and download it right to your iPhone. Even with such a small device, the readability is still good enough. You can choose from five font sizes and ‘flip’ through pages by just a light swipe of the screen left to right or vice versa. A single touch can also give you a list of choices of going to the cover page or the table of contents, or bookmark pages. The Kindle iPhone app is available for both the iPhone and the iPod touch.

If you’re worried that you’d always have to scan page by page to find where you left off in either device, fret no more. Through the Kindle’s Whispersync technology, changing reading devices is a breeze because whichever one you’re holding will automatically go to the last page you read across both gadgets. Just don’t forget to sync the Kindle or iPhone before you leave.

Convenient as the Kindle for iPhone may be, it cannot however do away with the need for the Kindle, but instead serves as a perfect substitute for it for short chunks of reading. The iPhone’s LCD screen also allows one to view images in full color. For the ultimate reading experience however, the Kindle’s e-paper technology, 16 shades of gray, and wider screen still comes closest to having a paperback on hand.

Lastly, while the Kindle iPhone app, has some great features, it isn’t quite the end-all and be-all of ebook reader to mobile phone technology…yet. Purchasing ebooks from the Amazon site directly from the Kindle iPhone app is not yet possible as of the moment (you’d have to use the iPhone Safari browser). Also, Kindle for iPhone is exclusively for ebooks at this time so your regular dose of news from newspapers and magazines can’t be accessed from the iPhone app yet too.

All in all, this pretty impressive technology is a must-have for techies and gadget geeks who have both devices. Check out the video above for a closer look at the Kindle for iPhone app and how it works. Then download it from the Apps Store and experience yet another dimension of this unique reading pleasure.