By Amazon just announced that they will be releasing their Kindle app later this summer for Android devices, with the promise that your “with Google” smartphone or tablet will be able to browse and download from the full library of Amazon e-books, as well as read the ones you have already purchased. It’s a great step in widening the reach of their Kindle service, given that many just can’t justify the purchase of a stand alone Kindle. Of course, Google Editions is also set to debut this summer (with a potential 4 million titles at launch) and looks like it will give the Amazon store a run for its money.
Androinica got hands-on with the app at Google I/O, and its just about what we expected. And that’s nothing bad at all, as the Kindle app looks like it will make reading on your Android device straightforward and intuitive. Take a look for yourself below:
It will *only* display books bought from Kindle? BAH. Android needs a solid ePub reader! Aldiko and FBReader just don’t cut the mustard!
At first when I heard Kindle might be coming to Android I liked the idea.
Then I thought about it and remembered it is full of terrible DRM. Enough stories of people downloading a book once to find out they are not allowed to download it again without buying another copy or even move the downloaded file to another device.
I have an iPod touch with Kindle reader and my wife has an Amazon Kindle. When she buys a digital book from Amazon, I can also download the same book to my iPod touch. My experience with the iPod touch has only been positive and I look forward to having a similar Kindle reader on my Android based phone.
@Will
I agree with your sentiments about DRM being anti-consumer; however, you are mistaken about Kindle only allowing you to download once. Once you purchase a book on Kindle, it is available on ANY machine that you can log into Kindle with (your home PC, Laptop, Android device, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.)
I purchased a Kindle version of a text book last semester, and was pleased that I could use it on any machine I was logged into Kindle with, as well as it syncing which page I left off on across machines. I was able to (without any issue) open the book on my home PC, my netbook, and my work PC. My only regret was that the Android client wasn’t available then.
DRM isn’t great, but Amazon’s implementation is as unobtrusive as DRM can be. I would liken it to PC games through the Steam Platform. As long as you can be connected and signed in, you won’t have any issues with it.
Kind of off topic but…what exactly is the appeal of stand alone eBook readers?
I mean, all the ones I have seen only display greayscale. All they do is read books (which have microscopic size footprints by modern standards). Why the hell are they so expensive?
Having read ePub books on my Droid, I really dont see the appeal of stand alone readers. Especially when they cost as much as my phone.
I am reading pirated DRM-free versions of the books I already own in ePub format now on Aldiko. But thats only because we havnt had a “real” bookstore app on the Android until now. I will definitely be buying books from Amazon once this thing goes live. Its about time.
JeffDenver – two things: screen size and e-ink. My Kindle is big enough to display about as much text as a paperback book with a decent sized font. More importantly, the e-ink reading experience is very different than looking at an LED or LCD screen. I can “read” on my phone for a little while, maybe 30 minutes at a stretch before eye-strain sets in. I can read the Kindle (and presumably any of the other e-ink devices) for hours.
There are several ePub readers.available for Android. EReader is one of the nicer ones, and is also on iPod touch and ipad.