The latest update to the Guardian Android app introduces new article functions and changes how adverts are displayed. Here's some of the thinking behind the changes
We recently published an update to the Guardian Android app, and if you've already downloaded it you may have noticed a few changes to your experience.
Save for later
Firstly, we've been working on enabling you to save articles in-app to read later or keep indefinitely. In testing, many people describe behaviour like emailing links to themselves or trying to remember headlines to Google later. Much of this behaviour is about saving and rediscovery: to keep forever or read later. So I'm really happy that the development team have had a chance to implement our new "Save" feature; it should save loads of people time and effort. In any article, gallery, or liveblog you can tap the bookmark icon in the action bar, or choose "Save page" from the menu. This will keep that piece of content for as long as you want on your phone. It will be available offline and accessible directly from a section at the bottom of your homescreen. In the future we hope to sync these articles with your Guardian account so that they're accessible on any device - but as it is, this feature is a great start.
Swipe between articles
Another new feature should make it easier for you to move through the news. Now, at the bottom of an article you can continue to swipe up to load the next article from the section you're in. Similarly if you are at the top of an article you can swipe down to reveal the previous story. Lastly, at any point you can swipe up or down with two fingers to move to the next or previous articles. Taken with being able to swipe right for related content, and left for comments, we hope that you're never at a loss of something to go on to when you've finished with a particular story.
Adverts
Lastly, you'll probably notice that we've changed how we deliver adverts in the app. One of the major reasons for this been feedback from Android 4 users who found that a permanent advert at the bottom of the screen could be tapped accidentally when using Android's system bar. Moving to adverts "in-stream" largely alleviates this problem, as well as allowing us to clear the space when there's no advert. It also means that we can offer different advertising formats to our commercial clients. Similarly, in articles, adverts now remove themselves once you start reading and scrolling. This clears the maximum amount of space for content, making your reading experience more pleasant.
Sometimes users can be frustrated that there are adverts at all in our app. But, to put it bluntly, creating and maintaining high quality, highly functional, apps like the Guardian Android app is not cheap and we need to generate revenue from them to continue to provide the great experiences and content that you expect from us.
Rightly, people have pointed out that there are other ways to do this - such as with options to directly support us, and we're actively developing these at the moment. In the meantime, I hope that the new adverts, along with the new features, lead to a better and more enjoyable experience. So if you've not updated, or you want to try the app out, visit the Guardian app page on Google Play to download.
As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions below, or you can tweet @guardianmobile
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