Kindle for iPhone — Amazon

Just recently Amazon released a major software update to its hugely popular, all-time number one bestelling product, the Kindle e-ink e-book e-reader. The update brought several new, much publicized features. With the new software version installed on your Kindle, you can now enjoy a new and easier layout for your magazine and newspaper subscriptions, you can immediately leave a rating and get recommendations based on a book you just finished, and you can enable your notes and highlights for public viewing.

But the most prominent among the new features is arguably the inclusion of real page numbers. Previously, the contents of Kindle books were marked only by location numbers, which remained the same however you resize or reformat the text. Apparently a lot of Kindle users, especially those who are members of book clubs or are academic researchers given to citing their sources, demanded real page numbers, which match those in their print counterparts. This in-demand feature is now also included in the Kindle app for iPhone and other supported Apple devices.

Accompanying the software update for Kindle devices and reinforcing Amazon’s mantra, “Buy Once, Read Everywhere,” the Kindle app for iPhone has also been updated not only to include real page numbers on Kindle books that support the feature but also to show progress through books both while in a book and in list view and to have the ability to look up words and phrases on Google and Wikipedia while inside the app.

Everything else remains the same: functional and convenient. Reading a book on the app is still a breeze, if not more polished. Tapping a title on your list of Kindle books opens that book to where you last left off, prompting you to advance to the furthest page read across your Kindle devices and Kindle apps (on your iPad, iPod touch, Android device, or personal computer).

You simply tap on or swipe from either side of the current page to turn pages and tap and hold on words to make notes and look up terms on the built-in dictionary, on Google, or Wikipedia. Tapping anywhere around the center of the page calls up the overlay menu, which lets you search the book for keywords, skip to specific locations, view your notes and marks, resize the text and change the page color scheme, and sync or retrieve your furthest location.

Another unchanged attribute of the app is the Kindle Store button. When tapped it still calls up the Safari mobile browser and goes to the iPhone-optimized Kindle Store site, instead of presenting the Kindle Store and enabling purchases within the app itself. With Apple’s recent announcement regarding their in-app e-commerce policies, it’s doubtful that where the Kindle Store button leads to will change anytime soon.