3 Must Have Google Reader Clients For The iPhone
Nov 23 2009 
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The life of a workshifter just isn’t complete without a mobile RSS reader. However, I find most RSS Readers for the iPhone slow when it come to Google Reader synchronization. Either that or they’re buggy. I’ve been using the Google Reader web app up until a week ago. Here are 3 Google Reader mobile clients that are changing the RSS mobile client space and help you kicking your RSS’ butt!
Reeder
Reeder carries on the visual simplicity of the iPhone experience and brings the best of Google Reader’s features in play such as share, note, star, and mark for later. After a recent update, the app now supports sharing to InstaPaper, ReaderItLater, Email, and Delicious. Not to mention synchronization with Google Reader feeds is blazing fast! Reeder was able to handle heavy media content without any problems. It even has the most nifty and quick web app guide in the help section. Reeder is well worth your $1.99 change from coffee.
MobileRss
From the team behind Twitbird Twitter client for the iphone, comes MobileRss, an iPhone Google Reader client that packs an impressive punch! MobileRss features some premium features for the steal price tag of $3.99. The list is pretty extensive:
RSS Views
- Shared Items
- Starred Items
- Notes
- People You Follow
- Comments
Social Sharing Features
- Email (without leaving the app)
- Instapaper
- ReadItLater
- Add A Note
Additional Options
- Unsubscribe and Delete Feeds
- Unshare Items
- Star An Item
- Open in Safari
- Save images to photo albums
- Recover screen to last usage
There’s also a free Ad-Supported version if you’d like to try before you buy.
Newsie
The Newsie Google Reader client is a beautiful mobile RSS reader for the iPhone. With well designed features reminiscent of of the experience with Tweetie, Newsie focuses on making it easy for you to filter your news in a digestible format. Starring items for later reading automatically triggers the app to stored the article offline. Newsie also supports recovery of where you were last reading. The app finishes off with an time-saving toolbar to switch between shared items, starred items, notes, and your feeds. It helps to ensure you get back to those items you starred for later.
What Would You Suggest?
Do you have some of your own favorite mobile RSS readers? I’d love to hear what you’re using in the comments.
- Are you reading RSS on your mobile phone?
- What RSS clients are you using and on what phone?
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Interesting list! Have to check them out – I was playing around with the first wave of greader clients (bolt reader, byline, etc…) and they all uniformly sucked. This bunch looks pretty good!
Thanks for this review. I needed a google reader app and this was helpful.
No problem Virginia. Which one did you go with?
I couldn't stand them either. They were entirely too slow when it came to syncing feeds with GReader. Too many hassles. I didn't have that problem with these iPhone apps.
Have you tried NetNewsWire for iPhone? Syncs with GR & NetNewsWire (Mac).
I've been using Byline for a while now and really like the ability to save items for offline viewing: http://www.phantomfish.com/byline.html Reeder looks interesting though, so I might have to give it a try. NetNewsWire is also good, but lacks Google Reader features like sharing, which is important to me, so I'm still waiting on an upgrade for that app.
thanks for the review, Corvida, I didn't know of any of these! I've been hoping that Feedly will finish their iPhone app soon, as I use it pretty much exclusively on my laptop.
will check out these others in the meantime.
Same here Terri. I'm really looking forward to feedly putting out an iPhone app. I think it would be killer.
If I need a Mac, I can't try it out. I'm on a PC. Though I'm working on getting an iMac for Christmas.
So I have byliine and I like it except that it doesn't seem to cache new items so I can read them offline. I thought it did when I bought it which makes me think I have configured it wrong. But no, right there in preferences I have “Cache by Wi-Fi only” set to off and “Automatic Syncing” set to on. What am I doing wrong?
Perhaps I need another reader. Which of these will download items in the background even if the reader isn't active, so I can read while offline?
Great questions Dylan. I'm not sure what you might be doing wrong with Byline, but Newsie will only download new items from the feeds you select. It won't ruin your experience by trying to download everything at once. It will save “starred” articles for later offline viewing too.
NewsStand is pretty nice too, though to be honest I bought it a year or so back just because of the pretty newspaper rack interface, before it had GReader integration.
NewsStand is pretty nice too, though to be honest I bought it a year or so back just because of the pretty newspaper rack interface, before it had GReader integration.
Thanks for the review. I've been using my6sense and I wonder how it compares with the other popular rss readers.
What are your thoughts on my6sense?
I am using netvibes more than Google Reader and my6sense works really well for me. I thought there would be more RSS readers that don't just pull feeds from Google Reader.
There are definitely some out there. I lean more towards Google Reader integrated apps because that's where a lot of my feeds live.
Maybe there are some netvibes iPhone apps out there. If there isn't there definitely needs to be. Will be on the lookout Carolyn. Good to hear from you again :)
We find NewsRack for iPhone indispensible for interacting with Google Reader
It looks good, but I find Newsrack kind of slow compared to the other choices. Maybe it's the amount of feeds I subscribe to.
hey i strongly recommend Newsrack which is probably the best for Greader http://getap.ps/+288815275
Newsrack is great, but it's kind of sluggish in my experience with it. I enjoy Reeder's simplicity too over Newsracks array of features and options