TUAW ebook reader smackdown: Kindle 2 vs. iPhone
Amazon changed all that with the Kindle by creating a device with built-in 3G networking that delivers books to you the minute you buy them. I was one of the people who purchased the first-generation Kindle, and though it delivered on wireless purchase of books, it was a clunky, poorly designed device.
In the meantime, Apple introduced the iPhone 3G and the App Store, and several ebook reader apps have worked their way onto the home screens of millions of iPhone owners. So, is Steve Jobs right? Is there no need for a dedicated electronic book device like Kindle?
I've used both the original Kindle and the new Kindle 2, and I've also read my share of electronic books on the iPhone. Which of the reigning champions of the ebook world is the winner? Read on to find out.
The Contenders: Kindle 2 and iPhone 3G
Kindle 2
The Amazon Kindle 2 (US$359) is the second generation of Amazon's ebook reader. What makes it so different from the other (i.e., Sony) ebook readers on the market? Built-in free Sprint 3G connectivity, AKA "Whispernet." Yes, it's free. Any book that you purchase from the Amazon Kindle book store has built-in wireless delivery included in the price, so you buy a book and it's delivered to your Kindle within a minute. It kind of makes going to the bookstore seem like an idiotic exercise in gas-wasting futility, especially when many of the books are discounted heavily over their dead-tree counterparts. I had a love-hate relationship with my original Kindle. I loved the built-in 3G, and often found myself purchasing books on a whim. But the design of the device was horrible. It was a clunky, angular box with too many buttons, a horrible user interface, and a tendency to require a reset on a regular basis.
The Kindle 2 changed all of that. Amazon took a design cue from the iPhone and created a new, ultra-thin, and curvaceous Kindle that is not only much better looking, but also more usable. Kindle 2 has more memory (2 GB, as opposed to 256 MB in the original), more shades of gray in the display (16, as opposed to 4 in the original), better battery life, and a new text-to-speech feature that has caused some authors to yell "foul!" Instead of the scroll wheel and slider on the original, there's now a little five-way controller that makes it easy to underline items for selection and then punch the button to enter the selection.
Using the Kindle 2 is easy. Each device is assigned an email address that is also associated with your Amazon account. What's nice about this is that if you happen to purchase more than 1,500 books and max out the memory of your Kindle 2, a copy of the books that you remove from the Kindle is still stored on the Amazon servers and you can download them at any time. What if your Kindle dies, or you lose it and get another? Enter the email address into the new Kinde, and your library is instantly available for access.
iPhone 3G
Out of the box, the iPhone 3G is not an ebook reader. What it takes to become an ebook reader is software, and there are several amazing ebook reader apps available from the App Store. Between the time that I started writing this article and now, Amazon also surprised us by releasing the Kindle for iPhone application. Suddenly anyone with a Kindle can also read their electronic library on iPhone. My first choice for an ebook reader app was eReader (see screenshot at right), simply because it was free and from Fictionwise, the first ebook store that I frequented back in my Palm days. I've used eReader with my Fictionwise account for about six months. But when Kindle for iPhone appeared, I had to install it as well since the app would allow me to read my Kindle books when I didn't have my Kindle 2 with me. Other reader apps include Stanza and Wattpad.
Stanza is incredibly full-featured, and it works with just about every possible ebook format except, of course, the proprietary Kindle format. It even works well with Project Gutenberg etexts, which means a large library of classics are available to you for free.
Smackdown Time!
Readability: Kindle 2 wins by a nose
The Kindle's screen is larger than that on the iPhone, it delivers sharp, high-contrast letters on an off-white non-backlit background, and it more resembles an actual book page than the iPhone 3G. In the iPhone's favor is the backlighting, which makes it possible to read ebooks in dark rooms without having to bring along a clip-on light. However, being able to read an entire page on the Kindle 2 instead of a paragraph or two at a time on the iPhone gives it a much more book-like feel.
User Interface: iPhone 3G FTW
I didn't like the page-turning buttons on the original Kindle, and though the Kindle 2 has improved on the idea, it's just not the way you read a book! When you pick up your first-edition copy of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, do you turn pages by clicking a button? No, you flick the page with your hand. Kindle for iPhone and eReader both let you flip pages with a flick of a finger across the screen.
Why Amazon didn't consider a touch screen for the Kindle 2 is beyond me. And if Apple ever decides to come out with a large-format iPod touch or iPhone (I can dream, can't I?), that would be the best ebook reader I could think of. A full page of text at a time, reading on a backlit screen, and using a flick gesture to turn pages would be ebook heaven.
Battery life: Kindle 2 is the long-distance marathon winner
One of the reasons Amazon didn't choose to include a backlight for the Kindle 2 display is that backlights use power. With a Kindle 2 with wireless turned on, you can read for up to 4 days. Turn the wireless off, and you can read for up to two weeks. The E-Ink electronic display uses no power except when updating a page.
The iPhone 3G burns through a full charge like Sherman through Atlanta (forgive me for that simile, southerners!). Is this a problem? If you want to read a book for a long time, like on a flight between the US and Australia, forget about using an iPhone unless you can plug it in. However, for short reads while you're commuting or waiting in a doctor's office, the iPhone's shorter battery life isn't that important.
Delivery of books: Kindle 2 is the clear and free winner
Both devices download ebooks over a 3G network from online bookstores. On the Kindle, you can browse and purchase books from the Amazon Kindle bookstore, then have them delivered free of charge to your device. The cost of the 3G service is included in the price of the book; there's no monthly fee to AT&T or your other carrier.
With the iPhone 3G, you're going to pay that monthly service charge whether or not you are actually using it as an ebook reader, so it's really a sunk cost. But still, the Kindle 2 delivers for free and that's why I'm giving it the win.
Number of books available: iPhone 3G Wins
When I first started writing this post, the Kindle was the hands-down winner in terms of the number of electronic books available. With the release of Kindle for iPhone, the 245,000+ books in the Amazon Kindle library are now available for purchase by iPhone owners.
The iPhone has an advantage over Kindle in this category, in that it can read books in the iSIlo, Palm Doc, plain text, PDF, ePub, eReader, and MobiPocket formats. Through other bookstores such as Fictionwise and eReader.com, hundreds of thousands of ebooks in many of these other formats are available for the iPhone and not on Kindle.
Other capabilites: iPhone 3G wins by a huge margin
The Kindle is primarily an ebook reader. It does, however, have a very rudimentary web browser listed under the "Experimental" item in the main menu. It can also read books to you through a text-to-speech capability
The iPhone? There are well over 20,000 apps now available in the App Store. No contest.
And the winner is...anyone who loves books!
Based on the six criteria listed above, there is no champion ebook reader. For people who are looking at buying a portable device to read electronic books, the iPhone and Kindle 2 both have positive and negative points.
In my personal opinion, the Kindle 2 is best for gadget geeks who are also voracious readers and people who don't necessarily want to buy an iPhone. The iPhone is the best ebook reader for people who are already own the iPhone (duh!) and who read books only in short spurts.
It's wonderful to see that we have so much choice in quality electronic book readers,and I'm thrilled to see Amazon try to reach their goal of getting every published book into the Kindle library. People who love to read are really the winners in the competition between dedicated ebook readers such as the Kindle 2, and software ebook reader solutions available for the iPhone.
As I mentioned above, I honestly believe that the best possible ebook reader would be a Kindle-sized iPhone. WIth the larger screen and backlight, Kindle for iPhone software, and ability to do much more than just display ebooks, an "iTablet" would be tremendous. Amazon would have a win, although the Kindle would probably cease to exist, since the Kindle library is the iTunes of electronic books. Steve Jobs may not believe that Apple needs to make an ebook reader, but if they simply made a large format iPhone / iPod touch, Apple would own the market for electronic book readers.
Do you read ebooks? If so, what's your favorite method of reading them? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Before the release of the original Amazon Kindle a little over a year ago, there were a number of electronic book readers that tried to...
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thank for posting
April 14 2009 at 11:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWow, such clueless, baseless, pulled out of thin air or a body opening ignorant opinions by Kindle fanboy/iPhone/iTouch haters.
Obviously the majority of commenters here don't even own an iPhone, so all of their comments are null and void, so if one is reading the commenters for an accurate assessment, pretty much ignore the whiny breathless "OMG, Kindle rulez/iPhone drools" vacuous, voted up by others in a circlejerk of cluelessness which dominate, wrongfully, this discussion and thread.
Unlike the baseless group of whining Kindle fanboys here, I own both, and I like both, and I can say the Steven Sande's article is pretty spot on. If you don't own both or have used both, basically you have no basis for opinion. It'd be like if you owned car A but had never driven car B but felt you somehow in your little mind felt you could justify saying why your car A was better than B, without ever test driving it.
I love my Kindle 2, but it's not the be all end all. Reading a book in bed with no lights is much better on relationships if you use the iPhone. I'm over 40 so the meme above of someone who, clearly, is mentally old (i.e. outdated) as they are narrow minded, is false, I can read the iPhone phone. In fact the great thing about Kindle books is they scale for their device, something lost on all the haters commenting without a clue about the genius of Kindle's deployment of information regardless of the reader.
So, from someone who DOES own both and has a clue, like Steven and the others commenting who own both and have a valid POV, iPhone by a nose. Why? I can put it in my pocket and take it with me. There are things I do professionally where some books about, say, Photography, it's awesome to have in my pocket, on my iPhone, where I can reach in my pocket and have info at a glance. Winner: iPhone. I give lectures and serve on panels about things in my industry based on published books, imagine sitting there and pulling out a Kindle? Or simply looking at the screen, a very readable one, where all the index and TOC are hyperlinked, and I can search it just the same. Winner: iPhone. And on and on. The Kindle is great for sitting at home or somewhere where having a giant piece of plastic with good lighting isn't an issue, for everything else (of which there's a lot of "everything else." There's the iPhone. Winner: iPhone.
If you don't own both, sorry, your opinion is null and void here.
"If you don't own both, sorry, your opinion is null and void here. "
Which is like saying my opinion on the most evil man between Hitler and Mussolini is null and void because I never met either of them. Maybe it is, but who really cares? I don't think it is logically possible for an "opinion" to be "void", but even so, there will always be some elitist who's ready to negate someone else's opinion and belittle them by using derogatory terms like "fanboy". I suppose I'm the real idiot, because while I'm writing this, in the back of my mind I'm trying to figure out why I even visit this site anymore.
I don't own both; I just have an iPhone. What's a better reader? The Kindle. And there's no "by a nose" about it. Because in the twenty minutes I used it, it was obvious to me, regardless of whether I had purchased it or not. I don't like staring at light bulbs, and neither do I like reading for extended periods of time on a backlit LCD. There's a reason that E-Ink displays aren't backlit on most devices. It's the same reason anyone "with a clue" as you put it creates a website intended for extensive reading with white text on a black background. I like having a lot of screen real estate to work with, too. Something about reading books... I don't know, I can't put my finger on it, but having lots of room for the text just makes it work. I'd rather put my testicles in a blender than read War & Peace on a book the size of the iPhone's screen, not to mention having a glow the equivalent of a soft white 20-watt bulb emanating from the pages. Having the book start ringing in the middle of the second act of the story because a debt collector thinks it would be a good time to talk about that payment you missed also makes reading so worthwhile.
Oh, and the complaint that you don't "swipe" to change the page on the Kindle is probably the stupidest part of the article, which already threatened to lower IQs sharply anyway. I want to "swipe" to change the page like I want to actually lift, aim and handle a 30-lb. weapon in a first person shooter game - for "realism". What's easier - depressing a button that your thumb naturally rests on due to the design of the device? Or lifting your hand up, placing a thumb or finger on the screen and "swiping" to the left, so you can somehow have the "full experience" of changing the page? What the hell is that anyway? Are people seriously this stupid? One of the greatest annoyances to book readers for hundreds of years has been turning the pages - getting them stuck together, moistening your fingertips for traction, etc. - and we elevate to a digital standard, removing that problem among countless others, and some moron wants to have the tactile pleasure of turning the page. Idiot.
There is one overriding feature that makes the iPhone the absolute winner in this shoot out: _I_always_have_the_iPhone_with_me._
It really doesn't matter how good the Kindle is, because the few slots in my life when I have free time to read a book are never times when I would be carrying the Kindle.
"The iPhone has an advantage over Kindle in this category, in that it can read books in the iSIlo, Palm Doc, plain text, PDF, ePub, eReader, and MobiPocket formats."
Kindle can directly read Palm Doc, plain text, and MobiPocket formats. It reads PDF through a converter.
I have both the iPhone and a K2. Using the iPhone Kindle App, the two work well as a team. If I want to do some serious reading, I grab/bring my Kindle. If I just happen to have a few minutes and don't have my kindle handy, I pull out the iPhone. Both devices seamlessly keep track of where you were in the book and take you to that place as you switch between devices.
As convenient as the iPhone is, for serious reading I will choose the Kindle. It provides a better reading experience. The e-ink screen is easier on your eyes and at 167dpi is higher res than the iPhone screen.
And to think TUAW bloggers are paid to write this kind of codswallop. This article is proof positive TUAW is barely informative, though-provoking, or humorous.
Didn't somebody -- anybody -- have to approve this idea before it was written?
I can't wait for the inevitable iPhone versus $400 digital camera "smackdown."
How can you say that the Kindle wins "by a nose" in the readability category? The Kindle uses an electronic ink screen that is nearly identical to printed paper. I'm a diehard reader and I've used every possible ebook reader out there. Believe me, there's nothing like the e-ink screen. No refresh. No flicker. You can stare at it for hours? Try reading for three hours straight on an iPhone and then repost your review. Your results will be different.
As an ebook reader, the Kindle wins hands-down. The iPhone is great (I have one) but when it comes to reading, I put it down and use my Sony Reader. The iPhone is NOT an ebook reader. It's a phone that lets you read ebooks. Your attempt to compare the two devices for the purposes is laughable.
If you enjoy your eyes, the Kindle wins out.
March 17 2009 at 4:26 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHave tried eBook-reading on the iPhone. It works!
Yes, you can read paragraphs of text, bookmark, flick pages, and so on. And I still think the iPhone is the single most useful device I've owned.
But the Kindle arrives tomorrow. Because while I can read a book on the iPhone, I'd rather not.
You really don't know why the Kindle 2 lacks a touchscreen?
It's all about readability. Go check out Sony's relatively new PRS-700, which does have a touchscreen. The screen isn't quite as crisp, and you constantly notice that you're staring through a couple panes of glass before you get to the text.
The Kindle 2's text is very clear & crisp, and almost looks like it's sitting on top of the screen. Putting a touchscreen on there would eliminate Jeff Bezo's focus on having the device "disappear" while you're reading on it. Once thinner, and less visually noticeable touchscreens are possible with e-ink displays, you'll see them show up on the Kindle.
don't forget that adding touch would surely significantly decrease the battery life as well.
March 17 2009 at 5:04 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI was assuming the lack of a touch screen was because of battery drain (right now, I imagine the Kindle's "on-but-idle" current consumption is nearly zero).
March 17 2009 at 11:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI really enjoy using Stanza on the iPhone. Not only can I read all the old Palm formatted eBooks I have amassed, but it can connect me to tons of on-line content.
March 16 2009 at 10:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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