Android: Android users looking for access to Instapaper have a few options — none of them official — but most of them essentially attempt to clone the iOS app or serve as a pretty way to present the web page on a small screen. That is, until now: Papermill is a new Instapaper client for Android that’s fast, looks great and gets the job done.
Papermill is $3.70 at Google Play and requires an Instapaper subscription ($US1/month) to use. Even though the app will set you back a few bucks, it works well and brings a simplicity to Android that none of the current free options, including InstaFetch or EverPaper, currently have. Once you have the app installed, just log in to your Instapaper account and tap to view the articles you’ve saved, complete with images, all laid out in the perfect size for your screen. Switching pages and articles is as easy as swiping left to right or up and down on your screen. If you prefer white text on a dark screen you can toggle it, or enjoy the standard black text on a light screen. You can also control the text size if the default is too small for your tastes.
You won’t get advanced options like tweaking the text colour, changing fonts, sorting Instapaper bookmarks, adjusting the layout or opting for multi-page reading, but Papermill is still a new app. The app looks sharp as well, and instead of re-skinning the website or borrowing UI elements from iOS Instapaper apps, Papermill uses the Instapaper API and looks like a native Android app.
Whether you can get over the $3.70 hump required to get your hands on Papermill depends on how heavily you use Instapaper. If you’re a heavy user and dislike the crash-tastic antics of some of the free clients, Papermill comes the closest to being an official client, and it’s definitely worth a look.
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