It’s only been a couple of months since the Kindle app for the iPhone launched. One of the most noticeable drawbacks at that time was that if you wanted to purchase new books directly on the iPhone, you were in for a very un-iPhone-like experience.
Luckily, that did not last long. Amazon has now provided a much nicer and more iPhone friendly experience for browsing through and purchasing Kindle books. The screencap above shows the main Get Books screen within the apps itself – which is already a step up from the way that screen looked before.
Once you make a choice on the main Get Books screen – by searching for something, or tapping on the bars for NYT Best Sellers or any of the other choices, you get taken out to Mobile Safari – but now to a fully iPhone optimized site which is so much nicer to work with.
Here’s a search results listing of books by the excellent sportswriter John Feinstein:
And a look at an individual book of his which looks quite good …
I think it’s great to see this upgrade from Amazon. It makes for a more end-to-end experience for iPhone users, and I’m sure will lead to a much larger number of impulse purchases on the iPhone …
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
its still lame that I have to use the web page to buy the book. I can't believe this isn't a built in feature of the app.
Thom – I'd like to see that capability too, but I keep seeing articles suggesting that this is a way for Amazon to avoid the whole in-app purchase system in OS 3.0 (and hence avoid having to give a cut to Apple) …
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