Flipboard for Android finally supports tablet view

[ponyo]

Took them long enough. But I prefer Google Currents. I used to prefer Pulse but recent update really ruined that app. Meanwhile, Currents improved so much. When it was first released, Currents was a joke and took forever to sync and it was laggy and basically the worst news reader on the market. Now Currents 2.0 is the fastest, the smoothest, and best reader on the market. It's remarkable how much it improved while the competition stayed the same or got worse. Currents gets my vote for the most improved app this year. As for the Flipboard tablet app, it's nice but it's no Currents. Flipboard missed their chance.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The recent update to currents last week or so was solid. The issue I have with it is that it's still slow as hell to sync.

Glad Flipboard for tablets finally landed. Actually Flipboard to me is far better than Currents. Their aggregate news and tech feeds are perfect. Kinda like Pulse.

 

[lopri]

A slightly off-topic question: I don't exactly know how this type of apps work. By "this type" I mean news service, radio service, or image service, etc.

Do they simply aggregate what's out there and let you see if anything is interesting? More or less what's presently popular?

It's not a search service, is it? For instance, a radio app may let you pick your preference but you don't get to hear the exact song you want at that moment, correct? News service as well. It simply collects popular stories for you to keep up, but whether what you specifically want is available (say, xxx's column 2 weeks ago) is not for you to choose?

 

[lopri]

I mean, same goes for sites/apps like Hulu. I am still not understanding its concept. They have some full movies, some full length TV episodes, and some 3 minute clips, etc. But I don't know whether something I want to watch is available. How does it work? And what exactly do people pay for?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Flipboard is just a twitter reader. It turns your twitter feed into a nice visualized form. It can do it with Facebook too. In general when people post links on twitter, it turns into an article form on Flipboard.

So in Flipboard's news or tech feeds, all it is, is a Flipboard twitter account retweeting stuff from CNN, Engadget, etc.

I'm not sure how Google currents works, but the end result is the same. Honestly Google Current's layout was trash until recently. I like to read tech, sports, news, by the category. I don't like having to pick between my sources 1 by 1, which is what Current sforces me to do. In the end I have like 20 sites, like Engadget, Mashable, TheVerge, TechCrunch, etc. just to hit my tech. Instead I can get it all in 1 click on Flipboard. I can still choose specific sites if I want by adding the individual site in Flipboard.

Overall, Flipboard for Android tablets is not complete. I played around for 20 minutes and I found some errors in it. For example, sites that aren't Flipboard friendly load in its native browser, which is slow as crap (like 15 fps scrolling on my Nexus 10), and not only that don't render properly. Having to scroll through the site when its so easy to accidentally flip to the next article is annoying. I kinda forget how it was on the iPad but I know it was done a lot better.

It's just version 1.0 for tablets anyway, so I'm sure they have a long way to go to iron out bugs.

 

[s44]

A slightly off-topic question: I don't exactly know how this type of apps work. By "this type" I mean news service, radio service, or image service, etc.

Not sure about the others, but Pulse is an RSS reader that offers up a bunch of prepackaged feeds that you can choose to use or not use. But you can also add your own custom ones (though my attempts to add an AL Daily feed always fail -- damn thing never updates past the date I add it on).

Now Currents 2.0 is the fastest, the smoothest, and best reader on the market. It's remarkable how much it improved while the competition stayed the same or got worse.

Hmm, maybe I'll try it out.