Kindle for iOS update brings more Kindle Fire like features

Kindle for iOS has received a neat little update that bumps it up to version 3.6 now. The updated app sports a refreshed look and an improved social connect along with other features that make using the app fun.

Now when you finish reading a book on the app, it will automatically prompt you to share your views about it. This feature is kind of a carry-over from the Kindle Fire that has had the ability to do so for quite a while now, along with a host of other post reading options.

Besides telling your friends about the book you just finished reading and writing a short review of it, you will now also be able to add books to your wish list on Amazon. For those not in the know, you still cannot purchase books from within the Kindle app thanks to Amazon's opposition of Apple's policy, but putting books up on your wish list will make it easier for you to eventually purchase them from Amazon's website.

The brand new Kindle for iOS

Users who like to highlight passages while reading books on Kindle are in for a treat as Amazon has made it a fun experience, adding four new colours for you to choose from instead of the default yellow coloured one that ended up getting very monotonous. If you're a regular iBooks user, you will realise that this option existed in the default book app for iOS since a while now.

Another fix to Kindle's iOS app brings the feature of your brightness setting to be saved across sleeps of your iOS device. This feature will be more than handy for users who usually prefer getting their daily fix of books while they're in bed at night. The brightness will be just right for them in the app now.

The app now also has an impressive new book view, which has a great looking progress bar and "new/download" badges to increase status.

It's great to see Amazon keeping Kindle users on iOS in the loop given its slight standoff with Apple because of its policies regarding revenue generation. Last month, Amazon had launched the newest version of its MP3 store designed especially for iPhone and iPod touch. Amazon’s 22-million song catalogue was made available for download for iPhone and iPod touch users for the first time ever.

Amazon launched this service not as a downloadable app, but as an HTML5 one that has to be accessed through Safari on your iOS devices. While this will make the process of purchasing music from Amazon a little less seamless as buying it from iTunes, users can access features like discounts, personalised recommendations, best-seller lists and more.

The reason why Amazon seems to have opted for the HTML5 route is because Apple takes a cut of 30 percent of all in-profit apps. While you might see an app for MP3 downloads from Amazon, the company seems to be bent on circumventing Apple’s policies.

Amazon in the past, along with Barnes & Noble, halted in-app purchases of e-books form the Kindle and Nook apps respectively in 2011 thanks to Apple’s 30 percent cut policy. The companies prompted users to purchase e-books via the Web, letting the content sync with the iOS apps.

So while you can download the Kindle for iOS app from here, new users would be better off warned that buying books is a slightly difficult task now.