App Review: Instapaper for iPhone

For a long time iSilo was the king of offline web documents and was able to grab a website and save it to a mobile device for reading offline. It worked well, but a desktop app was required to re-format the websites and to then transfer them to the PDA or smartphone. The whole process was manual and as time has progressed and mobile internet has taken over, the need for offline viewing has diminished somewhat.

However, some people still have a need for offline viewing, or more particularly a desire to build a repository of website articles they want to keep for reference later on. The problem is that many sites are extremely complicated and this does not blend well with the idea of downloaded content that can be read easily in the future.

Instapaper gets around this neatly by offering two settings, text and graphical, and by building in a process which is almost guaranteed to replicate the online view as you would wish for on a mobile device. Instapaper also offers a fully mobile way to grab web pages and this is incredibly slick in use, but a little bit tricky to set up on first use. To be fair, some very good instructions are included and you can be up and running in two minutes provided you ensure that you are following them to the letter.

In our tests every single site we converted displayed perfectly in Instapaper and having so many sites sat on the device for viewing later offers an assuring feeling that you will not lose the information you want. It also makes managing a large number of reference notes much easier than a standard list of web bookmarks.

Maybe the need for this app is a throwback to the non connected PDA days and that established users are more likely to want this facility than newcomers who are used to accessing everything via the web. However, it has a place for everyone and you may be surprised at how useful it is once you have it up and running.

This review is based on the free version which manages the core functionality of saving web pages to an iPhone, but there is a paid for version with more features including folder support. The problem for the developer is that the free version is very, very good and this may hinder sales, but if you use the free app extensively the folders alone make a purchase worthwhile.

Our advice is to try the free version and see what you think- this is one app that you will either never use or will come to rely on every single day.

Price: £2.99 (for Pro version)
Verdict: 9/10

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