You might remember that earlier this year, I was screaming on the roofs that I wanted a dedicated Google Reader client on my Symbian devices with a long wishlist of features that my ideal application would offer. I was one step away from learning C++ and writing it myself, as it baffled me that up until recently, no one had tried to develop that, not even Google themselves.
Well, the wait is close to be over now, as MojosMobile, the developers behind Twittix, are going through the last tests for their gReader client. I was lucky (and stubborn) enough to land a beta version of gReader, and here is a full walkthrough of what is, in my opinion, a contender to the most-perfect and complete mobile Google Reader application.
Note: this article was edited on the 29th of October, with a few new features that were added to gReader before its official release.
Launching gReader for the first time
The first time you open gReader, you’re asked if you’d like to synchronize your subscriptions with your Google Reader account. You’re then taken to the Settings pane where you can enter your Google Reader username and password, as well as tinker with a lot of other options.
If you set the Autoconnect and Autodisconnect to “On”, gReader will behave in a very intelligent connection mode: it will stay offline unless it’s downloading items or updating their state. If you star an item, or read an item, gReader will then connect, synchronize with the web service, then disconnect. It’s a very efficient way to avoid staying online all the time, and it happens in the background so you don’t have to worry about anything.
You can also allow Forwarding of items to Twitter, which will give you an option to enter your Twitter username and password. There are also options to choose two different font sizes, as well showing only unread items.
Main gReader view and Options
This is the main screen of gReader. On the top right, you have 4 interactive icons that indicate the synchronization status, connection strength, reception strength and battery status. The synchronization and battery indicators are animated, so if you’re charging your device for example, you will see the battery meter moving.
Right below that, is the current view’s title. As you see, there is the pane’s number, title, and unread/total item count. Scrolling left or right lets you go through the different panes, and these are: All Items / Starred / Shared / Read Items / Unread Items / Folders / Individual Subscriptions. If you do the math, this is one of the rare mobile Google Reader applications that offers such a complete experience, allowing you not only to view your items by folders, but also by individual subscriptions. Then we have the main article list view. Each news article shows with its title, the subscription’s title, date, and a snippet of text. There are 3 visual icons right next to it that show if the item is starred or not, read or unread, as well as shared or not.
gReader supports kinetic scrolling on S60 5th Edition and smooth scrolling on S60 3rd Edition through the long list of news. It also has some nice animated scrolling effects when going left and right through the different panes, and full gesture control on S60 5th Edition: you simply flick your finger across the screen to change panes.
On the bottom, you have the Options and Exit keys. The Options menu allows you to Refresh, as well as access the Settings and Help menu among others.
Shared & Starred Items
The dedicated Shared and Starred items on gReader allow you quick access to the items you have favorited, as well as your shared list. A nifty addition is that the Shared list not only shows you the items you have shared yourself (yellow icon), but also the items that your friends have shared with you (blue icon). I’m a big fan of this feature.
Folders view
As I said, gReader offers an individual Folder and Subscriptions view. Below are screenshots of two different folders on my Google Reader account: Service Blogs and Nokia. gReader supports keyboard shortcuts, so if you’re on S60 3rd Edition or on an S60 5th Edition device with a keyboard (N97, N97 mini), you can easily type 1 to go to your “All Items” tab, or for example 14 for me to go to my “Service Blogs” folder. It’s an incredibly welcome feature, as for people like me, who have over 100 subscriptions, it can get really difficult to scroll left and right through them. I’ve been using these shortcuts on my E71, and I really love how easy they make it to switch from tab 85 to tab 12 for example in a click.
Reading a news article
gReader also has one option very similar to the web version, and it is that it opens articles inline, meaning that when you click on a news item to read it, it will expand but keep it in the context of your whole news stream. There’s no character limit to the amount of text that it displays if an article is very long, but the main drawback is that it doesn’t support images yet (edit) and it also supports downloading, rescaling and displaying images the moment you open a news item with pictures included.
News article actions
When you’re reading a news article with gReader, you can access a contextual menu that allows you to Open the article in your browser, Forward it via SMS or Twitter or Email, Star/Remove star, Share/Unshare, Keep Unread, Mark all as read, Mark all as unread, as well as sort your news by date, title or read status which is a very welcome feature.
Search
This is one of the coolest features of gReader, as it lets you search the web for keywords, then allows you to Subscribe to the feed if you have found an interesting article. Notice that the tab is labeled “0″ so you can access it by going left from your main “All Items” tab. (edit) A new function has been added letting you also search your subscription news, the tab is still the same, but you get both web results and RSS results in one layout, visually differentiated by the icon on the right.
Landscape mode
All the options explained above work both in portrait and landscape mode, with gReader supporting accelerometer based changes. They also work on S60 3rd Edition as well as S60 5th Edition.
Final thoughts
gReader is under heavy beta testing now (and by heavy, I mean I have been hammering it), as some last options and features are being added and ironed out. Personally, I think that gReader is pretty darn close to the perfect Google Reader client on Symbian I envisioned when I first wished for it, and it has surprised me by adding a couple of features that I hadn’t thought about, like the scrolling gestures on S60 5th edition, and the keyboard shortcuts.
Edit: We have also published a full 10 minutes walkthrough of gReader to show you how it actually behaves, other than the screenshots.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch the newest videos before they go live on the blog!
With gReader nearing its official launch now, what do you think of it given the extensive screenshot-walkthrough shown above? Is there any feature that impresses you, or any option that you believe is missing? Are you excited about getting your hands on it no matter what, or will that decision be based on its 7.95EUR launch price?
