What's App

Flipboard for Android Launches: What You Need to Know

Jonathan Charles

Flipboard, the app which allows important information from around the Web to be brought together in a single magazine-esque interface, has released on Android after launching on iOS in 2010. New features include integration with Google Plus. So here’s the need-to-know information.

YouTube and Google Plus integration works like adding a Twitter account or Facebook profile to Flipboard: users tap the ribbon which shows services and then go to "Your Account, Add Account" and type in the relevant information. It means when someone uploads a video, for example, or posts a status on Google Plus it will appear on Flipboard and is readable from the app.

YouTube integration works just like the service: users can see, along with subscribers' videos, comments, likes/dislikes, shares and the ability to subscribe to users. Google Plus, perhaps unsurprisingly, is fully featured and includes +1ing posts along with sharing, commenting, moving between Circles and users. "I find the new Google+ Flipboard experience much more pleasing to browse than the recently redesigned Google+ mobile apps, which seems overly cluttered," The Verge said.

Flipboard will also present selected content in a larger, rectangular tile on the first page of the app. Tiles can be repositioned or removed, helpful for users who have titles for specific interests such as techology and politics and social media.

The Android version of the app will also be pre-installed on the Samsung Galaxy S3 on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint in the U.S. Flipboard, on iOS, was chosen by Apple as its iPad app of the year 2010. "They [Apple] would love for us to be iOS exclusive from now until the end of time. But we're trying to reach as big an audience as we can," Evan Doll - Flipboard co-founder - revealed.

Flipboard isn't the first once-exclusive-to-iOS app to launch on Android: Instagram, the popular photo sharing and editing service, jumped to Android and is currently in the process of being acquired by Facebook. Smule is another; the company builds digital music apps for iOS (or did).

Why are apps moving? Despite Google Play arguably lacking a wealth of high-quality apps compared to iOS, Android is the leading mobile operating system worldwide and has an active app store.

Flipboard for Android is is available on Google Play along with the Amazon App Store, Barnes & Noble's Nook Store and Samsung Apps. The update also arrived for the iOS app.

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