Amazon updates Kindle for Android to work on tablets

Amazon has updated Kindle for Android, bringing new features and adding support for tablet computers running Android 3.0 (codenamed Honeycomb). The latest version of Kindle for Android includes an integrated immersive shopping experience tailored for tablets, a new layout for newspapers and magazines designed for Android 3.0, and dozens of other new enhancements that take advantage of the larger screens.

This update is quite significant for at least one big reason, but first, here is the list of new features now available in Kindle for Android:

• Seamless integrated shopping experience tailored for tablets gives you quick access to personalized recommendations, customer reviews, and more.
• Refined newspaper and magazine layout including full color images.
• Ability to pause, resume download at any time.
• Enhanced word look-up capability (for Android-based phones and tablets) with built-in dictionary with over 250,000 entries and definitions.

The fact that Amazon has released an update focusing on the tablet-optimized version of Android is important if we consider the recent rumor that Samsung is building an Android tablet for Amazon. This is just another reason to believe that Amazon is developing a tablet that will offer features beyond the current Kindle. Whether Samsung ends up being the one providing the hardware doesn't really matter, but it's pretty clear that Amazon has chosen and Android, and it's pretty obvious that the Kindle ecosystem will play a major role in the tablet the company will release, likely sometime this year.

Amazon claims the Kindle Store offers the largest selection of books people want to read, including 110 of 111 New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases from $10. The best part is Amazon's Whispersync technology, which saves and synchronizes your full library of books, bookmarks, last page read, highlights, and annotations across all of your Kindles and Kindle apps for the iOS, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Android-based devices.

"We've taken all the features customers love about Kindle for Android, and created a beautiful new user interface and a seamless shopping experience tailored to the look and feel of Honeycomb tablets," Dorothy Nicholls, Director of Amazon Kindle, said in a statement.. "As always, Kindle customers 'Buy Once, Read Everywhere,' so Kindle for Android is the perfect companion for the millions of customers who own a Kindle and a way for customers around the world to download and enjoy books on their Android phone or tablet even if they don't yet own a Kindle.