Kindle, iPhone upgrades not worth the hefty price

They’re the two coolest gadgets that have recently come this way: Apple Inc.’s iPhone 3G S and the Kindle DX electronic book, from Amazon.com. Both are upgrades of highly successful products; neither is enough of an improvement to make sensible people grab for their wallets.

Consider the Kindle DX, an upgrade of an upgrade. Just three months ago, Amazon replaced the relatively chunky, first-generation e-reader with the sleek new Kindle 2. As with the original, a user could instantly download electronic books from Amazon. The then-new Kindle boasted a particularly slick new feature: text-to-speech software that would read your downloaded books out loud.

How has the Kindle DX improved on the Kindle 2? Well, it’s bigger, which makes for a more comfortable read. Newspapers come across especially well. It made The Wall Street Journal look splendid.

The new Kindle also switches to widescreen mode when you tilt it to one side, an idea made popular by the iPhone. And the DX boosts storage from a potential 1,500 books to 3,500.

Still, the Kindle 2 was no bargain at $359, and the DX is pricier at $489. Nothing they’ve added to the DX is worth that much money. Indeed, I’m skeptical about the entire Kindle concept. Aside from the price, they’re too big for comfortable commuting. The thought of leaving one behind on the subway is almost unbearable.

And there’s a safer electronic alternative: the cellphone. Most of us own one already, they easily fit in a pocket, and the bright, sharp screens on today’s smartphones make for decent readability. Amazon gets it; the company has created Kindle software that runs on Apple’s iPhone.

Kindle software even runs on the original iPhone 3G, now $99, as well as the new iPhone 3G S, priced at $199 or $299. Come to think of it, the cheaper iPhone can run most iPhone software, as well as Apple’s sharp new operating system, iPhone 3.0. So why buy one of the pricey new ones?

Maybe you can’t resist that extra storage - 16 gigabytes for the $199 version, or 32 gigs for $299. There’s an onboard camera that offers three-megapixel resolution, up from two. Snapshots are noticeably sharper. The new iPhones can also shoot full-motion videos and upload them to the video-sharing website YouTube. Video quality is about what you’d expect from a cellphone.

Apple scores by tailoring the iPhone 3G S to people with poor vision. It’s got a suite of accessibility features, including a zoom that blows up images and a VoiceOver feature that lets the phone tell you what you’re touching. Tap the settings icon, and a voice says, “Settings.’’ Tap twice quickly to open it. And there’s voice control to execute tasks by speaking commands. A blind person still can’t use the iPhone, but it’s now practical for those with marginal vision, or those of us who are just getting old.

But some more appealing features aren’t available yet. For example, the new phone is compatible with a faster 3G cellular standard, which claims speeds up to 7.2 million bits per second. But AT&T has only just begun upgrading its network, and it hasn’t gotten around to the Boston area yet.

The new iPhone can also be used as a cellular data modem for your laptop. And you can add photos or audio to text messages. But you can’t do these things until AT&T says so. The company vows that it will enable the new features later this year.

Besides, a lot of the 3G S’s best features are found on the cheaper 3G as well, thanks to iPhone 3.0. The new operating system adds Spotlight, the excellent search feature found on Apple’s Macintosh computers. Type in a query, and Spotlight searches every file on the phone - documents, contacts, songs, whatever - and presents every likely match. If the narrow touch screen keyboard is bothersome, tilt the new iPhone sideways for a wider keyboard. And you can cut, copy, and paste text just like on a real computer.

Also, 3.0 finally supports GPS navigation with turn-by-turn driving directions, with downloaded third-party software and for $10 a month. AT&T’s own Navigator software works well, including a handy feature that lets you locate addresses by speaking them into the phone. And if your kid has an iPhone, 3.0 offers a parental control system that can be used to block unduly violent or salacious programs.

There’s lots more good stuff in 3.0, and you can have all of it for $99, the price of a standard iPhone 3G. Now just download Amazon’s Kindle software, and you’ve got an excellent electronic text reader as well. And you can buy a small library’s worth of books with the money I’ve just saved you.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.