Kindle for Android

Kindle for Android

Being an unabashed Kindle lover AND an unabashed Droid lover - the two together makes me happy in a way that only those with a serious geek affliction would understand.

I’ve had a couple of days with the new kindle app and there are things I like and some warts.  

Things to like:

• All of your purchased items are available.
• The screen will rotate just like any other Android app
• You can change the background/text color from black on white to black on sepia or white on black. (this is terrific for reading in the dark)
• Your “last page read” is automatically updated so you are always in the right place no matter which device you open your book on.

Things that I don’t like or could use improvement:

• Brightness does not follow the OS settings.  You must manually set the screen brightness in the app.  If you are trying to read in the dark - be prepared to be blinded while you fiddle with the settings.
• If you have books on your Kindle that you have loaded via USB or even documents that you have mailed to your kindle address - they are not available on the Android app.
• Books take a long time to download - even on wifi.  This is really odd and I suspect that there is actually a format translation going on somewhere.  On WiFi getting a book will take several minutes at least.  The one I pulled down on 3G took almost 10.
• You must enable wireless on your Kindle for the “last page read” sync to work - not really any other way to do it though.

Overall it’s terrific.  I’m sure Amazon will fix the screen brightness issue over time.  I wish there were a way to tag USB / email loaded items for synchronization.  I often get books from sources other than Amazon and I’d like to have them appear in the Android app.

Good job so far - Thanks Amazon!