Read our Kindle for iPhone review...

In a somewhat expected move, Amazon has released Kindle for iPhone, a free application available via Apple's App Store (direct link; will launch iTunes) that can run on the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch. The application allows you to read any book that you have purchased on the Amazon Kindle Store on your iPhone and iPod touch. You cannot purchase titles directly from the application, but you can do so via Mobile Safari. When you first load the program and set up your account, if you click on the Get Books button it takes you to a page informing you that the best way to do so is to visit the Kindle Store and clicking on the Safari link takes you directly to the store.

In the Kindle Store, I quickly discovered that a lot of books I'd like to have for virtual reading aren't yet on the Kindle Store. A search for one of my favorite authors, Cormac McCarthy, only returned his two recent books that I'd already read: The Road and No Country for Old Men. I tried looking for some Tolkien, as I haven't reread The Lord of The Rings in a while, but that's not there either. I'm currently reading Tad Williams' Shadowmarch, so I thought I'd look for that, again, with no luck. I ended up subscribing to The New Yorker magazine for $2.99 a month. After completing the transaction via the iPhone and clicking purchase with One-Click and signing in to my account, I was taken to a page that told me that I didn't own a Kindle and asking if I wanted to register an iPhone or iPod touch. I thought that I'd already done this via the application when I initially launched it and logged into my account, so I assumed this was just a warning message and went back to the application to read my magazine. Unfortunately, I discovered that it wasn't there. After all this wasted time, I was left thinking that it's too bad there isn't an actual Kindle Store interface in the application like the iTunes Store or the App Store applications on the iPhone and iPod touch. 

Unfortunately, no matter how many times I deregistered and reregistered my iPhone, Amazon never acknowledged that I had a registered device, so I was not able to write the actual review of the service that I had planned. Perhaps I will get another chance later today. For now, I'm excited by the potential strength of the Kindle Store selection being available for the iPhone and iPod touch, but very frustrated by my inability to use that service upon its launch.

Did you get the Kindle for iPhone application working on your iPhone or iPod touch? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

A special thanks to @SpecMode on Twitter for giving me a heads up about this news when I first woke up this morning and asked my followers what I'd missed. Behold the power of Twitter!

Also, speaking of Twitter, we're tracking any similar problems like the ones I've experienced above on Twitter with the hashtag #kindleforiphonefail. Feel free to share via Twitter if you have similar problems.

UPDATE: After multiple attempts it finally worked for me. They must be experiencing some sort of delay in registration for some people as new people sign on. As you can see in the picture below, I was finally given an option to send wirelessly to my iPhone.

 

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