Feeds brings a local Google Reader client to the iPhone …

Holy smokes! There’s a new native Google Reader feed reader app for the iPhone.  It’s called Feeds, and it allows you to view your Google Reader feeds locally rather than via the Safari browser, and keep items in sync, so that items you’ve read on the iPhone will show as read when you return to a full browser.

Feeds is just at a very early release stage right now (Version 0.2) – but it is excellent to see a native Google Reader client regardless. With this app, there’s no need to manually enter feeds you want to keep up with or mess with copying over an .opml file containing your feeds list – just enter your Google Reader acount credentials in its settings one time, and you’re good to go. 

The app presents individual articles quite nicely – formatted well for the iPhone screen of course, and handles images within posts fairly well.  So it’s quite nice for reading even full articles in.  It also shows you your unread items count with the red number display on its home screen icon.One odd thing I’ve noticed is it seems to ignore the ‘Read More’ breask in feed items, and just displays full articles always – not sure if this is by design or not.

Not surprisingly, this very early version has some problems and leaves a lot of room for Wish List items I’d like to see in next / future versions.  Here are some of these after just a short while of using Feeds:

• It has an issue with sometimes hanging for a fair while on the launch / splash screen and then bombing back to the home screen.  I’ve manually adjusted permissions on it, but this has not fixed the issue entirely.  This one may be unique to me, but if it’s not then it definitely needs to be fixed.
• When viewing your full listing of feeds, the ordering of them is odd.  It’s not alphabetical, and does not pick up the order used on a full browser either.  I’m not sure what it’s based on, but it would be good to see some options for choosing how you want the list ordered.
• The listing of feeds shows *all* those you are subscribed to, even those with no new / unread items.  An option to view only those with new items would be very welcome.
• When viewing the list of articles for an individual feed, it shows post titles only.  I’d prefer to be able to see even just a first sentence under titles (similar to how Goog Reader’s iPhone version displays) – as this makes it easier to skim items quickly and maybe decide to mark all as read quickly, for example.
• Speaking of which, there should be buttons to ‘Mark All As Read’ or leave all unread when viewing a single feed’s listing.
• Syncing seems like it could be a bit quicker – so far it has taken around 3 minutes, over a WiFi connection, to sync my 153 feeds. If the speed cannot be improved just yet, then it would be good to see an option to sync individual feeds.

Overall, there are certainly lots of things that could be improved and some kinks to iron out – but if this app gets some quick updates and continues to be developed, it will be a BIG favorite for me, and probably a lot of other Google Reader users.

Feeds is developed by MMi forum member 424f.  See this thread for further thoughts and updates relating to the app. Feeds is available now on Installer …

Tags: Feeds, Google Reader client for iPhone, iPhone Google Reader app, iPhone RSS reader, iPhone native apps

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