GQ magazine’s new iPhone app is very promising, but the digital experience is ultimately let down by the small screen.
Reading a newspaper and a magazine are two very different experiences. While a newspaper is about delivering timely reports of events and insightful analysis, a magazine is often a more immersive and recreational activity. The typically shorter news article format has proven to translate very well to mobile format, exemplified by the excellent Guardian iPhone app. The appeal however of picking up a glossy magazine and dig into a well-written article and enjoy quality pictures, is not translating that well on a 3.5 inch iPhone screen.
The GQ app is doing a good job working with the given size limitations. In vertical mode, the text is presented on its own and with related media such as images, audio and video, shown separately in full-screen. When tilting to horizontal mode, it presents the content as in the printed version. While this helps to provide a more immersive experience with exciting layout, formatting and large pictures in context of the article, the text is too blurry to actually be readable, and there’s a constant need to pinch and pan to alternate between reading and getting an overview.
As it stands, the main issue is that by separating images from text, and only provide rudimentary layout and formatting – the true magazine experience is lost.
- You’ve got a choice of either readable text…
...or beautiful layout. But unfortnately the tiny screen can't provide both.
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }