The New York Times has released an official news app for Google Android. At first glance, the app looks like a clone of the newspaper’s iPhone app. Both allow you to sort news by category (World, US, Politics, N, Travel, Magazine, Latest, and so on). And both apps are much faster and easier to navigate on a mobile device than the New York Times web site.
But the Android app has a few features that set it apart from the iPhone version. The first is a “Latest Videos” section, which lets you see the latest videos from the New York Times web site and read a brief description. If you tap on a video, it will open up in the Android media player. The iPhone app doesn’t have a video section. Interestingly though, the iPhone app has a Popular section, which is missing from the Android version.
The New York Times App for Android also makes use of Google’s navigation scheme for Android. For instance, I find it much easier to hit the back button to return to the previous menu in the Android version of the app than to use the button at the top of each page in the iPhone version. Read the rest of this entry »