Access TIME’s quality content anywhere you and your Droid may roam

RATING
4 out of 5

PRICE
FREE

TASTY
Clean, simple app makes it easy to swipe your way through TIME’s photo sets, podcasts, videos, Lists, top news, and more.

BUMMER
Smart phone screens are too small to allow for long reading or content browsing sessions without inducing serious eye strain. And with so much to consume in this excellent app, older eyes will prefer the iPad version of TIME’s worth mobile outreach efforts.

COOL
TIME voted the Motorola Droid as the “Gadget of the Year” for 2009. So it stands to reason that they’d roll out a top-notch Android app, right?

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Read all of my Apple iPad and Google Android application reviews at Appolicious and Yahoo! Tech.

Although every magazine in the country has been on a low-content-carb diet for several years running (you’re thin already!), the stories, photos, and content that TIME magazine’s staff churn out every week also find a popular home on their website and growing family of mobile applications.

Droid owners now have access to the TIME Mobile app, and not a moment too soon. After all, its editorial board named the Motorola Droid as the “Gadget of the Year” for 2009. (Take that, Apple iPhone!) So it stands to reason that they’d roll out a top-notch Android app, right?

Despite its “free” price tag, this little app packs a content punch that other magazine application developers would do well to emulate. It’s super-simple to swipe your way through TIME’s always amazing photo sets, growing collection of video podcasts, ever-popular Lists, long-form news stories and breaking story details, and more.

My favorite features? The ability to save articles right on your phone for reading offline, plus a built-in widget maker so you can customize the TIME content you like most and have it appear right on your phone’s Home screen.

At the end of the day, you could spend your time browsing TIME content via http://mobile.time.com. Thankfully, TI Media Solutions avoided the “wrapper” trap and have taken TIME and its content to the next level on our Android devices. A must-have for serious news junkies and fans of this acclaimed news weekly.

Don’t miss the built-in widget for searching TIME’s back file database. This takes the app from the arena of the casual browser to the serious researcher doing deep-dives into everything from today’s news makers to yesterday’s biggest historical events.