Instapaper, the uber popular iOS “reader it later” app, received a major update on Android today. I’m still not sure why people wouldn’t go with the free and equally as impressive Pocket for their “read it later” app of choice. But choices are never a bad thing, even if the developer thinks Android is the slums of the mobile Earth, will never match the polish of iOS, and that you probably can’t afford his app. He would like to thank you all for your support, though, because you’ve helped make updates like this possible. 

Here is the list of new goodies and tweaks:

• Scroll by full pages (Pagination)
• The Feature (editor recommended articles)
• Scroll by tilting
• Sepia Mode
• In-line Footnotes
• Bug fixes
• Performance improvements

Play Link ($2.99)

Instapaper Receives Update With New Features, But You Probably Can’t Afford It is a post from: Droid Life

Familiar with Instapaper? It’s this ultra-popular iOS read it later type of app that apparently, some Android users have been begging for. Think of it as the most minimal app on the planet that allows you to catch up on articles you may have started earlier in the day, but would like to finish later. At $2.99 though, we are trying to figure out how the price is justified. Pocket (formerly Read It Later) is free and in my opinion, much more beautifully designed and with more features. Plus, I watched Instapaper’s developer the other day talk about design and being minimal, yet he couldn’t even code the legacy menu button out? That would be the awful looking black bar at the bottom of all of those screenshots.

To be fair, the app does function as advertised. It is minimal, but with just the right amount of features to allow it to get the job done. It’s up to you to decide if you want to pay that price.

Play Link ($2.99)

Instapaper Launches on Android at a Whopping $2.99, Ugly Black Bar Legacy Menu Included is a post from: Droid Life

Like most of us, I use my phone in a newsreading capacity quite often. Whether I’m looking through Google Reader or even browsing Droid-Life, I use my phone to keep up to date or to just kill some time when I have nothing else to do.

Instapaper makes that easier by stripping the formatting from sites that I want to save for later. The end result is a clean page that retains text-based formatting (like italics, bold and hyperlinks) while eliminating other annoying elements that may be obtrusive, like ads or sidebars. A third party has recently come out with an Android app, and I thought it might be a good idea to put it through its paces.    

Bookmarks are created by using a bookmark applet in your computer’s web browser, or the “Share” button in your Android browser. The app’s function is simple; you log in using your account details on Instapaper.com, and an API call syncs your saved sites to your phone. You can then read them while the app updates regularly so you can keep up to date. Articles can be sorted and favourited in-app, and that carries back over to your web-based account. Data is stored internally on your phone’s memory, or via SD card; however, if you installed your copy of the app when the SD card is unmounted, you must reinstall in order to change the settings. Doing some searching around reveals that InstaFetch sores a Database File (.db) in that folder; I’m unsure if that includes local copies of a user’s sites.

The Pro version allows you to switch to a darker “Night Mode”, read in fullscreen, and enable a wifi-only mode. By themselves, these don’t seem like features that I would pay money for: however, the real worth is in its added sync to Evernote. As a student who laments the death of Google Notebook and refuses to use Microsoft OneNote, I use Evernote a lot for my day-to-day writing. That additional functionality would be great, if Evernote didn’t already have their own (free) app.

What irks me is most is that the Pro version is listed as “free” in the marketplace; however, when you install it, it refuses your credentials until you buy it through the developer’s website. This is frustrating and off-putting to me.

In short, Instapaper is like the recently-deceased Delicious, only geared towards mobile devices. However, it seems a little bit too late: any site worth a damn probably has their own mobile version, and if you own a smartphone to begin with, you’re probably familiar with a little gesture called “pinch to zoom”.

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Matt Demers is Droid Life’s Toronto-based app reviewer, and needs to stop hitting refresh on his Google Reader. You can follow/talk to him on Twitter.

InstaFetch brings Instapaper to Android is a post from: Droid Life