Doing what I do for a living, I spend a lot of time looking at Google News on my various smartphones. That’s why I’m happy to say the search giant has improved Google News for smartphone devices that run on the Android OS, iPhone (iOS) OS and webOS. Google has updated the way Google News works on these devices, which should make browsing on the go much, much easier. With easily identified categories and screen-saving features, the smartphone optimizations that went into effect today make a big difference on the smaller screen.
According to the Google News blog:
We expanded the story space to make tapping on articles easier and more accurate. Tapping anywhere on an article headline or snippet opens it up, and clicking on a section heading opens up that topic section on your screen.
In addition, the default view of stories is now collapsed, to reduce scrolling time. You can ‘expand’ a story by tapping ‘More sources’, which brings you to related stories from other sources. The screenshots below show the collapsed and expanded view of a story.
It’s not a mind-blowing update for Google News but it is a nice one and it makes it much more touch-friendly and easier on the eyes. The collapsible stories and optimized category functionality brings the mobile version of Google News more up to speed with the desktop version of the Google-run news portal. If you’re looking to do some heavy news consuming, you might want to stick to the desktop version of the website. But, if you’re just looking to get a good news reading experience on your iPhone or Android phone, the updated site will make your experience that much easier and more efficient.
Check it out on your phone and let us know what you think in the comments.
[Via Google Mobile blog]