"But I still find the greyness (which is mainly the non-backlitness) of the Kindle inferior to my iPhone."

Josh Marshall and I are on the same page about this:

It's designed that way in part because it allows the battery on a Kindle to last an insanely long period of time but also because it's supposed to be easier on the eyes. Maybe I just spend so much time in front of a monitor that my eyes are trashed and I don't know the difference. But for me, on the iPhone, it just looks more crisp and readable.

Can we just have an iPhone with a big screen? Or is this all about the batteries?

Marshall, unlike me, quickly settles into reading on the Kindle, then mulls over the prospect of a future without actual paper books and newspapers:

There's a lot I miss about print newspapers, particularly the serendipitous magic of finding stories adjacent to the one you're reading, articles you're deeply interested in but never would have known you were if it weren't plopped down in front of you to pull you in through your peripheral vision.

I miss that too, but I canceled my NYT subscription a while back because I was leaving the folded paper on the table as I read what I wanted, free-form, on the computer screen. As Josh says:

... I regret not reading [newspapers]. But I just don't. I vote with my eyes.

Yes, I've done that, and now my eyes — and my brain — have changed. It's hard now to read an unlit page.