Google has overhauled its iPhone interface for Google Reader, making it behave a bit more like the traditional desktop browser interface. The new beta version of Google Reader for the iPhone behaves much more like the list view on the desktop — clicking an individual item in the list loads it in place rather than taking you to a new screen.
The recently introduced Notes feature and your friend's shared items feed have also moved up and get top billing just above your tags/folders. The view of individual items in your feeds has also been redesigned to match the desktop look — options to star, share or mark as unread are all in their familiar locations.
The new interface is also much better at providing feedback when things are loading and makes it easier to revisit read items. Although it's purely subjective, this version also seemed significantly faster and more responsive than the older one.
On the downside it takes a few more taps to get where you want in Reader. For instance, in the older version tapping a folder full of unread items took you straight to a list view, but now there's an intermediate step that lists all the feeds in that folder. From there you can either tap again and get to the list view of everything in that folder, or select an individual feeds to get the list from just that source. In the end it makes it easier to narrow your reading, but it does add an extra step.
You can access the new Reader interface by pointing your iPhone to .
[screenshot via the Google Reader Blog]
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