Grant Cerny

No matter who I talk to who owns a Kindle, they’re all jabbering about the iPad, wondering if they should ditch their Kindles. And I’m always saying “NO! Keep your Kindle! Did you even know you can read your Kindle books on your iPhone, or iPod Touch, or (I assume), your putative iPad???”

From my experience in traveling and on my commuter train, your average e-reader owner today is using a Kindle, and seems to be very happy with it. But they all seem to be missing one thing.

What’s that thing?

Kindle / iTouch / iPhone 3-Way

They can read their Kindle books on their iPhone.

So I’m in Arizona with my wife at the Royal Palms Hotel. It’s a brief 24-hour respite from our 3 children, who are being watched, thank the Lord, by her parents. We are at the pool, and eventually strike up a conversation with the nearly-retired couple in the lounge chairs next to us. The husband asks me about his Kindle. He says “How do I know what page I left off on?” and we get into a rambling conversation about text sizes and pages and positions on the Kindle.

Then I say, “What kind of phone do you have?” He picks up his device – an iPhone. I offer, “Did you know you can read those Kindle books on your iPhone?” He had no idea. Then I told him the real coup de grace. “And whether on your Kindle, iPhone, iPod Touch, no matter what, it will always keep track of the last page you read.”

That’s the killer feature. My last-page-read-in-the-cloud. Pick up any one of “my books anywhere” and it always knows what page you’re on. Time-saver. Time spent reading, not finding.

Here’s what I do, when I’m reading a Kindle book.

I leave my Kindle at home next to my bed. It’s for bed-time or serious day-time reading. It’s small and light enough, but my iPhone is lighter, so when I’m on the road (my train ride, or in an elevator, or waiting on line for lunch), I read same book from my iPhone. Really, no waking moment is wasted when your reading materials are always on your phone.

Then when I get home and go to bed, sometimes my wife is awake and reading too. Then, I read the Kindle. But then she wants to go to sleep, and can’t stand any kind of light. I used to have no good answer for this, and would read in the very dim light, annoying both of us. Now, of course, Apple has solved. I pick up my iPod Touch, which is about 4 years old now, but still as functional as ever, and open up the same book, and it finds my last page. I have the iPod’s brightness turned WAY down, the background turned black and the text color white. As such, I can read almost in the complete darkness, without making anything bright. My wife sleeps. No sounds of turning pages. The finger-swipe-over-glass is soundless.

In the morning again, on the train, if I use the Kindle app on my iPhone, it immediately takes me to wherever the hell I left off when last night I finally fell asleep and dropped my iTouch on the floor. Yes, that’s why I use the iTouch for ultimate reading. It’s dispensable to me. Damaging my iPhone would be a more serious proposition.

I have not seen a single iPad on my train yet. I think that’s a function of its weight, not the fact that it’s new. I’ve held an iPad. It’s hard to hold up casually.

I think more and more people will start to realize that for true mobile reading, a smaller screen is just fine! It is, for me.