We’d always thought this was starting to be a year of Android tablets, but until a day Google gives its full blessing for the inscription form factor, the marketplace will still be lacking in apps that make good make use of of the additional screen estate. Funnily enough, currently a Wall Street Journal took the leap of conviction and pushed out an Android chronicle of its tablet app, only in time to float on the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s first wave. In many ways, WSJ’s Android app appears to be a slimmed down chronicle of the iPad equivalent. Once logged in with the subscription account, users are greeted by a same begin shade for selecting your papers, that are automatically downloaded during launch. Naturally, once a writings are on your device, you can review them regardless of internet connectivity, as well as you can save your favorites to the dedicated area there for quick entrance as good. More after the break.App examination: Wall Street Journal’s Android tablet app

Once you’ve loaded your preferred duplicate of a paper, you’ll be shown a front page, which is comprised of three title blurbs, 3 smaller excerpts from the business as well as financial section, as well as a feature blurb in a bottom-right dilemma. Scroll further down and you’ll see teasers for posts from the U.S. News and World News sections, many of which come with the small square thumbnail. There’s no stock ticker during the tip of a page, but you can regularly pull up the quotes search box regulating a Android device’s menu button at any time. To jump from a single section to an additional, you can possibly appropriate horizontally or make use of a menu prompted by drumming a tip club — we cite the latter to equivocate the annoying fullscreen ads cheekily extrinsic in between sections. Interestingly yet, you don’t get any ads whilst swiping through articles, but don’t let Rupert Murdoch know about this.

The biggest difference between a iPad version as well as the Android chronicle of WSJ’s app lies in a essay layout: rather than than bursting a body into mixed columns as well as swelling them across pages horizontally, a Android version does it all in a singular column on the singular page. This makes clarity in mural mode given a not as big screen size, but it’s not as appreciative to the eye in landscape mode; which said, if you do have a thing for wider paragraphs, afterwards they’re certainly tolerable if you pick a large text distance — you can do so regulating the symbol with the larger “A” at the bottom right dilemma of a page. Speaking of which, you’ll also find two more buttons subsequent to a content distance keys — one’s for jumping to a tip of a page, as well as a other’s for jumping to the bottom, just similar to the “Home” and “End” keys upon a desktop set of keys. We haven’t been regulating these 4 tiny buttons most nonetheless, though they could do with some sizing up to cover more of the fingertip.

Another big difference between the dual versions is the approach video clips are embedded in the articles. In short: it’s not for a short-tempered — it’s bad enough that a articles take roughly twice as long to bucket, though you’re additionally forced to watch them in full screen only; since the iPad version lets you watch them right inside the article (like HTML5 videos in iOS’ Safari) or in fullscreen mode. In WSJ’s invulnerability, this is probably some-more to do with sure limitations upon Android, so here’s hoping that Google will chuck in a little useful tweaks in a near destiny to assist developers on this matter.

Wrap-up
Despite all the shortcomings, we’d say WSJ’s done the pretty great pursuit here, generally for being the initial announcement to take the dip in this brand-new pool with little support from Google for a tablet form factor. There’ll of course be sure limitations if you review with a iPad chronicle, though we’re assuming you’ve been understanding this to see how good the app runs, rather than deciding that device to buy because of the app. Anyhow, if you’re picking up an Android inscription shortly, it’s value giving this app a shot.

Via Engadget