The attractive Android app is a customizable newsreader that delivers headlines from your preferred sources, plus serves as store from which you can purchase books and magazines. Google Play Newsstand boasts partnerships with many publishers and has incredibly eye-catching layouts, but a few niggles prevent the app from overtaking Flipboard as the top Android newsreader.
Let's Play
Google Play Newsstand contains four main sections: Read Now, My Library, Bookmarks, and Explore. Tapping Read Now takes you to the Highlights section, where you'll see news items from a variety of big-name sources, including The New York Times, NPR, and Slate. If you don't fancy the default publications, you can add your own?more in that in a bit. Unfortunately, you can't outright mute, block, or remove a source as you can with Flipboard and Zite.
The Reading Experience
Google Play Newsstand's article layout is standard fare for news-reading apps. It's very clean, and I didn't encounter distracting advertisements. That is, no distracting ads from the originating Web pages. Google, on occasion, does place large book and magazine advertisements into articles' bodies. The ads are intrusive, especially when they're not at all related to the article's topic.
On the upside, Google Play Newsstand has a very cool translation option that let me convert English language pages into Filipino, French, Polish, Spanish, and dozens of other tongues. In addition, you can save pages for offline reading, so you can fire up articles when a wireless signal isn't available.
Let's Play
Google Play Newsstand contains four main sections: Read Now, My Library, Bookmarks, and Explore. Tapping Read Now takes you to the Highlights section, where you'll see news items from a variety of big-name sources, including The New York Times, NPR, and Slate. If you don't fancy the default publications, you can add your own?more in that in a bit. Unfortunately, you can't outright mute, block, or remove a source as you can with Flipboard and Zite.
The Reading Experience
Google Play Newsstand's article layout is standard fare for news-reading apps. It's very clean, and I didn't encounter distracting advertisements. That is, no distracting ads from the originating Web pages. Google, on occasion, does place large book and magazine advertisements into articles' bodies. The ads are intrusive, especially when they're not at all related to the article's topic.
On the upside, Google Play Newsstand has a very cool translation option that let me convert English language pages into Filipino, French, Polish, Spanish, and dozens of other tongues. In addition, you can save pages for offline reading, so you can fire up articles when a wireless signal isn't available.