Comments on: Kindle for Android vs. Kindle for iOS

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 15:55:13 +0000

No access to the Wishlist? That’s a terrible oversight. Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn’t noticed that one yet.

By: Paolo Amoroso

Paolo Amoroso — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:56:07 +0000

Some Kindle for Android usability issues:

* it’s impossible to select more than one word of text https://plus.google.com/115447412616529141867/posts/ibPqvwwdbKx
* no access to the user’s wish list while buying at Kindle Store
* an annoying bug I reported long ago was never fixed: cover thumbnails of recommended books fail to load in the home screen (it’s necessary to unregister, uninstall and reinstall the app to fix this, before it starts again)
* slow to start even on cutting edge hardware (e.g. Nexus 4)

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:07:13 +0000

Thanks for the corrections on opening Kindle apps from cloud storage in the Android version. But the fact that it wasn’t obvious to me (a long-time techie) still makes me think the point is valid. A new Android user might not discover that option, while it’s obvious in the iOS version.

Paul, I’m not noticing the slowness on start-up. It loads quite snappily on my Nexus 7. I completely concur with the sparsity of features.

By: Michael W. Perry

Michael W. Perry — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 23:32:07 +0000

A lot of features differences are the result management decisions to allocate resources. Perhaps this is because Amazon feels more competitive heat with iOS, where they compete with the iBookstore, than for Android, which will never get an iBooks app.

By: Paul StJohn Mackintosh

Paul StJohn Mackintosh — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:08:20 +0000

Amazon’s Android Kindle client still feels lacking to me – kind of surprising since the Kindle itself runs modified Android. Compared to the rich feature set of FBReader or Aldiko, for instance, it’s very bare-bones. No font choices. Just three colour backgrounds compared to FBReader’s rich palette. I could go on. And on. And it’s unforgivably slow to load when it starts up. Come on, Amazon, with your market dominance, how hard can it be to get this right?

By: Tom Semple

Tom Semple — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:48:20 +0000

One annoyance is that all ‘Downloaded items’ offer ‘Remove From Device’ regardless of whether they are stored in Kindle cloud storage or they are just local files. So you don’t know whether you are ‘removing’ or ‘deleting’.

If they just added the categories Books/Docs/Newsstand that would be enough ‘organization’ for me. ‘Search’ is faster and more scalable than ‘Collections’, particularly with voice search, which works pretty well.

Also, It’s time to deprecate the use of ‘Archived Items’ in favor of ‘Cloud’, which is the terminology used on more recent Kindles and of course the iOS app.

By: Tom Semple

Tom Semple — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:24:52 +0000

Kindle4Android has several features not found on its iOS cousin:
- direct access to the Kindle Store
- voice search in Library
- full KF8 support (iOS does not yet support reflowable KF8)
- Send To Kindle functionality is built in, and available from many Sharing options in other Android apps

To get a file from Dropbox to Kindle app, there are a couple of easy ways, neither requires additional software, or hooking up to USB etc.:
- Use Dropbox ‘Export this file’ option to Save to SD card, find the ‘kindle’ folder and Export it there
- Send To Kindle also appears as one of the options for Dropbox Export. Using this you can send a .mobi or pdf file (or .txt or .html) to the send to kindle service, selecting your Android device as the destination (or some other Kindle linked to your account), and choosing whether it is stored in the cloud or not.

Similarly, with Google Google Drive you can Send using Send To Kindle, or use a 3rd party tool such as ES File explorer to move the file to the ‘kindle’ folder after downloading it.

By: Rob Siders

Rob Siders — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:29:15 +0000

Kindle for Android *one* distinct advantage over Kindle for iOS: full support for KF8.

By: Rob Siders

Rob Siders — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:27:21 +0000

To sideload a Kindle book to the Android app:

1. Connect your device to your computer via USB
2. In Windows Explorer, browse to your device’s directory structure and find the one labeled kindle
3. Drag-and-drop your kindle book into that directory
4. Eject your device and open Kindle for Android

By: dave

dave — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:20:28 +0000

Take a look at the “unfinished” Kindle for Win8 — it is very poor in organization and won’t display book titles (just a dust cover which is hard to read in a lot of cases) among other stuff.