The Google Play Newsstand, Google’s news curation and information app, has an update rolling out in the Play Store. The update, version 4.5 for those keeping score at home, improves browsing within the app and also improves the handling of photos with improved zooming in on photos. If you have the app installed, you can expect the OTA update to the new version over the course of the next few days.
While the Newsstand app relies heavily on AMP pages, there are still plenty of sites that it leverages that don’t use or fully use it. That can make browsing slower which is something Google addressed in this build. Browsing of these non-AMP sources is much faster within the app now with far less loading time. I tested this on both LTE and Wi-Fi connections and in both cases, they content loaded noticeably quicker.
The other big improvement in this update is the ability to zoom in and out on photos with much better quality. Previously, you
Google Play Newsstand
were more-or-less zooming in on the whole page but now you can zoom in on an image and get clearer detail when viewing.
There are, of course bug fixes and other performance in the update so even if the new features don’t wow you, it’s always a good idea to get the update so you have the latest-and-greatest.
If you haven’t tried out Google Play Newsstand on your Android phone or tablet, it is a free download in the Play Store.
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