Below is a gallery of screenshots I took this morning of the Kindle for iPhone application [App Store link]. Buying a book via Mobile Safari sucked, but watching it magically appear without having to sync the iPhone or connect it to anything was nice. The text is easy to read and navigation works as you’d expect, though it lacks the eye candy of Classics and the Iceburg books.
For now, you must purchase books and subscriptions via Mobile Safari or your desktop browser. That’s the speed bump here. As soon as users can buy content from the app itself, it’ll be killer.
Here’s our initial post on TUAW. Speaking of which, I’m currently writing an “iPhone eBook Reader Smackdown” for TUAW, featuring Classics, Iceburg, Stanza, Bookshelf and Kindle. Look for it later this week.
Update: Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s coverage, as well as that from The New York Times and The AP. Here’s a nice side-by-side comparison of the iPhone app and a Kindle 2.
That’s all well and good, but the real fun for me is watching the world’s reaction in real time.
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I’ve been using eReader’s software to read eBooks for years now. They have an iPhone/iPodTouch client (free!) and a huge selection of books.
Not having either an iPhone or an iPodTouch I can’t vouch for how the software performs on those platforms, but it works extremely well on the various Palms I’ve used over the past decade or so.