In true geek fashion, I love to read. I really like that I can access my books from my phone any time I have a few minutes to kill. I was really excited to see the Kindle App from Amazon come out for the Android OS.

I can access books I’ve downloaded or bought while I was at home or at work and I can download something new in the blink of an eye! Ah, my library in the cloud. I am a happy camper.

The Kindle app allows you to access more than 620,000 electronic books through Amazon. There are free books to download if you search and it’s easy to find bestsellers or books of interest to buy and read instantly. I’m all about instant gratification. All you have to have is an account at www.amazon.com. Download the app, login using your amazon account credentials, and you are in business. It’s easy and handy!

If you own a Kindle or if you use Kindle for PC, the Android app synchronizes everything in the cloud, from your books and bookmarks to annotations across devices. I was able to download the app from the Android Market and have all of my books downloaded from archives in just a few minutes. You can change text size for reading and you can read in either portrait or landscape mode. To turn the page, just tap the side of the page or flick with your finger like you are going to another screen on your device.

You must have Android 1.6 or greater to run the app. It’s fun to play with even if you don’t plan on buying books, there are many books available for free, such as the Poe book I am using as an illustration (below).

While you are reading, you can tap menu to change your view settings, go to a bookmark, add a bookmark, sync the app with your account to get new books or go home.

One of the main features that I use on Kindle for PC is highlighting so I can use things for reference when I write papers, or just to highlight things I think are cool. That is missing in the Android App. Also, although you can bookmark things and go to bookmarks, there is no search feature. You can’t search for any specific term within books with the app. The subscription service is not incorporated yet, so no newspaper or blog subscriptions yet. I am sure that will happen pretty soon.

Overall, I hope that there are eventually updates to add highlighting and search, but since it’s a free app that lets me access my library at my convenience, who am I to complain too much? Go get your read on!

Developer Information : Amazon.com

Price: FREE

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Pros:

Free!

Easy to use

Syncing across devices and platforms

Books on the go, when you have time to read!

Cons:

No highlighting

No search

No Amazon blogs or subscriptions YET

Score: 8.9 out of 10 because of the missing features