Flipboard – utterly slick & beautiful app for Reading News & Social updates
by Paul Wilks
Jun 11, 2012 12:46 PM –
Install
Flipboard is a gorgeous and functional news application on Android where you ‘flip’ through your news with cards.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Beautiful and innovative user interface!
- Customisable news feeds!
- Social network support: get news from your Facebook and Twitter feeds!
- Intuitive controls and navigation!
- Share via other phone apps!
- Widget!
Cons
- Like other news aggregator apps, it can suffer a little when switching from the nice in-app reader to webpage reading.
Features:
Flipboard is due to be released on Android in the near future, but we thought we’d run a review on the sparkling beta version. The first thing you’ll notice about the app is the user interface. You turn over pages flipboard style (obviously) and each turn is responsively animated and fast. Text is bright, clear and very easy to read. Photographs are bold, bright and look utterly superb in the app.
The first thing you need to do is create your account. Although this takes a minute or two, it means you can use the app across whichever device you’re using- your news streams will be there for you. You can then sign into your social networks; Twitter and Facebook. The app can then stream the latest updates and news stories from these. You can also sign into other services such as Pocket (formerly ReadItLater) in order to save articles for later consumption.
The adding of news sources is then very similar to that of Google Currents; skim through the embedded lists beneath genres- News, Business, Tech & Science, Video, Cool curators, Photos and Design, Living, Entertainment, Sport, Travel, Style and Local. Being an already popular service on iOS, you can expect to find all the big news sources and websites here. Once compiled, it’s simply a case of flipping through the thumbnails and entering the source you want to read. It’s very simple, convenient and intuitive.
The app is also very sociable. Not only are you able to follow news stories from the likes of Twitter and Facebook, you can also share stories to these mediums and update your status directly. Acknowledging that social networks are a primary news source for many people, and ensuring these are subsequently integrated into the app is a big feature for Flipboard and the ‘symbiosis’ works seamlessly.
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Flipboard beta – Front page
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Flipboard beta – Flipboard picks
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Flipboard beta – Mid-flip
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Flipboard beta – View by genre
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Flipboard beta – Personal sources
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Flipboard beta – News story text view
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Flipboard beta – News story photo view
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Flipboard beta – News story photo view 2
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Flipboard beta – TED
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Flipboard beta – Subscribe to various sources
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Flipboard beta – Facebook integration
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Flipboard beta – Account details
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Flipboard beta – Version
Usefulness:
Flipboard brings together all your favourite news sources into one, beautiful and functional app. You can add social network feeds and share articles wherever you like. If you use apps like Pocket (and you definitely should), the app can relay articles there for later reading.
Ease of Use:
It’s intuitive to use and very simple. Its most user-friendly element perhaps is the easy way you can add and search for news sources.
Frequently Used:
Flipboard is supremely comfortable to use and easily something you might check on a daily basis if not more often.
Interface:
There are many similarities between Flipboard and Google Currents. However, while Currents features the slick and polished Holo design, Flipboard boasts quite simply the most beautiful interface I’ve ever encountered in a news application. The way you flip between pages is not only functional, it also looks and feels sublime to use.
One criticism might be that the stories are generally rendered as large pictures, and you have to enter them to grasp the story, which is the most convenient way to browse and feels similar in experience to using the new Google+ Android app. Personally I don’t mind this too much but I know others prefer smaller links and descriptions.
The bottom line on the UI however is that it looks utterly gorgeous. Such a stunning UI makes it a joy to use.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Flipboard,
Flipboard beta,
Google Currents,
iOS,
News,
Samsung Galaxy S3
Categorised in: News & Weather
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