Press for Android wraps Google Reader in a slick package
The newest RSS reader app for Android may be attractive and easy to use, but it still has some work to do if it hopes to dethrone my current favorite in the category.
Editors' note: Price of the app has been corrected.
Meet Press, a slick new app for keeping up with your RSS subscriptions on your Android device. It syncs to your Google Reader account and presents all of your articles in a well designed package, with an attractive typeface and dead simple navigation.
Perhaps the best thing about Press is its interface. The open layout and six different font choices make it a pleasure to look at. And just like Google Reader it's really easy to navigate.
Once you sync Press to your Google Reader account, the app opens up to a list of all your folders with the number of unread items in each. On tablets, this list appears on the left side of a two-panel layout, while on phones it takes up its own screen. Go into a folder, and you'll see all of the news sources contained within. Go one step deeper, and you'll be able to swipe between individual articles. If you've used any other RSS reader app before, then Press should be just as easy if not easier to use.
While it certainly looks nice, Press did disappoint me with some performance issues. On more than one occasion, I saw the app crash as I tried to pull up articles from different news sources. Also, I was disappointed to see that there's no quick way to jump through articles and mark them as Read, which might be a deal-breaker for me.
After playing around with Press for a while, I can say that, at this point, I still prefer Feedly as my RSS reader of choice. Some may find Feedly too complicated, but I find its visual design even slicker than Press', and it offers a few gesture controls that are just too useful to abandon. Plus, I don't have any issues with it crashing on me.
That said, I am still impressed with Press, and I am excited to see what the future holds for this great-looking app. This is, after all, version 1.0, so we can all be sure that it's only going to get better from here.
Press is compatible with devices running Android version 4.0 or higher, and is available now for $1.99 on Google Play.