Nowadays, technology is rapidly improving — trying to improve and make things easier for us all. Same goes in the field of publication and newspapers. An app named PressReader allows us to read newspapers from 95 countries in 54 languages; just how brilliant is that?
This handy and useful app is super awesome because it is cross-platform. It runs in iOs, Android, Windows Phones and Blackberry.
I’ll be focusing on Android as i’m an Android user. My phone is an international version of Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000) with a custom ROM running Android Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.3)
Installing PressReader on Android
Installing the app from the Android market was as simple as any other, just fire up Android market app tap the search icon, search for pressreader, once result is presented tap pressreader and then tap install to install the app on your phone.
PressReader Features
- More than 2,100 and still counting full-content newspapers and magazines
- Newspapers from 95 countries in 54 languages
- Read newspapers from cover to cover
- Listen to publications using on-demand audio
- Authorize PressReader with your PressDisplay.com account
- Flip pages like reading real publications
- Pan and zoom articles and photos and view in stunning clarity
- Easily browse publications using page thumbnails or interactive tables of contents
- Open full articles in easy-to-read text view
- Load the article by tapping the articles headline
- Set up automated subscriptions to favorite titles
- Search across titles and select titles you wish to download
PressReader allows its user to read more than 2,100 full-content digital versions of newspapers. After installing the app you’ll have 7 free issues, after it i think you have to choose between per-issue basis or a $29.95 USD per month subscription.
PressReader offers staggering amount of newspapers. Even though there’s a lot of it, the app nicely lets you break them down “By country” or “By language” to make it easier for you to make your selections.
Once you find the newspaper of your choice, you can then download it by tapping it and then the app will present you the issue picker where you can choose what date of issue you want. Another great feature is that the app allows you to either automatically deliver all new issues or not, and it allows you to add it to your favorites.
When you select a paper to read, you can swipe left and right to switch between pages, or pinch to zoom in and out. Regarding the text, when you zoom in and out the text resizes nicely, pictures look great too, all in all it really feels like you are using a real newspaper. Of course, the very nature of newspapers means that they are quite difficult to read, things like “See Page 7″ to read the whole article and scanning through pages to read your desired article can get tiresome. With PressReader just tap any article headline and it will instantly load the whole article, no more scanning through pages. Cool isn’t it?
Watch PressReader for Android in action
Verdict
Overall, I think PressReader for Android is an excellent app, feature packed, handy, user friendly and easy to use. The only drawback i can think of is its subscription plan. At $29.95 USD per month that would be a big NO NO to a lot of users, the only people I can picture spending $29.95 USD per month would be those who read multiple newspapers from around the world. RSS is there for free and most papers having the same content on their websites offer it for free too so why spend right?
I just hope PressReader would somehow improve their pricing. If they can and if they will, i’m sure a lot of users will use this brilliant app.
How about you? What do you think of PressReader for Android?
