Amazon announced a new version of Kindle for Android that comes with several new features. These include:
- Search within the book: Customers can either type or speak a word or phrase to search within a book.
- Add, Edit and Delete Notes and Highlights: Kindle for Android is the only reading app for Android-based devices that allows readers to add notes and highlights to books, and have them automatically synchronized between devices.
- Wikipedia Lookup: Look up words and phrases in Wikipedia simply by selecting text.
- Shelfari Book Details: For the first time, customers can view additional book details from the books-focused social networking site Shelfari. Readers will find a description of the book, synopsis, summary, cast of characters, and many more features, and be able to view real-time discussions that the Shelfari community is having about the book.
- Orientation Lock: Choose to lock the orientation of their screen in landscape or portrait mode to allow for comfortable reading in any position.
"Customers tell us they love the freedom and flexibility of our Buy Once, Read Everywhere approach because they always have their full reading library at their fingertips and never lose their place in a book—whether they are reading on a Kindle or one of their other favorite devices," says Kindle Director Dorothy Nicholls. "We’re excited to see our customers’ positive response to the Kindle for Android app and we think that customers are going to enjoy the updates we’ve made."
The app is available in the Android Market and users who already have Kindle for Android will receive updates.
Interestingly, Amazon also says it has over 700,000 books in the U.S. Kindle store.