If you use Google Reader to aggregate news feeds and you browse with Firefox, Chrome, or Safari, you owe it to yourself to try Feedly. It's great. But enough about the web app, I want to talk about their iPhone app and why it has replaced all other RSS reader apps on my iPhone (also available for Android).

The news reader app space, especially apps that can synchronize with a Google Reader account, is not sparse. Several apps hold the top spots, including Reeder, Byline, and NetNewsWire. If you ask someone to recommend an app for reading news feeds, there's a very high probability that one of these three will be what you're offered. Before proceeding, I haven't used NetNewsWire, so I'll refrain from dissing it. However, I have used the free version of Byline for several months and briefly used the full version of Reeder.

So with so many good and well respected options in this area, including one that I've already paid for, why would I emphatically switch to a relative newcomer?

First, Feedly understands design. This app is beautiful. Just like with their web application, the iPhone version of the application provides a clean, well designed interface. Despite a minimalistic aesthetic, there are clear lines that make skimming headlines a breeze. Each "section" in the application has a "front page" that highlights a recommended article from your sources, while subsequent pages display four headlines each, along with an accompanying image (if available). Dividing headlines into pages instead of a continuous list may not sit well with all users, but it provides a very structured, easy to read layout that I find much preferable to the never-ending list with one headline always halfway off the screen. The transitions between pages and when loading articles are smooth, even on my old iPhone 3G. In short, the app looks great without severely taxing your phone's resources.

Second, the gestures used within the app are by far the best implementation I've seen in any news app on the iPhone. Moving between pages? Swipe left or right. Mark an article read? Tap to the right of the headline. Save the article? Tap to the left of the headline. Mark a whole page read? Swipe down. Want the page unread? Swipe up. These gestures are intuitive, and while most apps have something similar, the combination of design and gestures just works better with Feedly.

Of course, not everything is roses. As a relatively new player on the mobile app scene, Feedly is missing many features that the more established offerings provide. While the navigation gestures are exceptional, if you are reading an article, there is no gesture to move to the next article. Something simple like swiping left or right to move to another article (as done by Byline) would be perfect. Several configuration options are missing. I couldn't find a way to rotate the screen, which is normally the only way to get a decent view of images. However, Feedly does address this shortcoming somewhat by having an excellent "touch to zoom" feature for images. After connecting the app to my Instapaper account, I could no longer use Google Reader's built in Saved Articles feature. Actually, the app seems to randomly switch between using Google Reader's Saved Articles and Instapaper, so mark that down as a bug. There's no way to configure the number of articles that will be synced and there's no caching for offline reading (potentially a major drawback for some users). For the first few days, the session connecting Feedly to Google Reader would expire every few hours and require a new login.

Despite all of these shortcomings, Feedly for iPhone has replaced my other news readers. I got it for free during a promotion last week, but is it worth the $5 regular price? Reeder and Byline are $2.99, NetNewsWire is $4.99, and the latter two have ad-supported free versions. Right now, I could fully understand not wanting to spend the money when cheaper alternatives are available, especially with several competitive features missing. I can't wholeheartedly recommend the app due to incompleteness relative to other offerings, but it's simply the best news experience I've had on my iPhone within its current limits. I expect great things from Feedly in the near future and expect the app to become directly competitive on a feature-by-feature basis very soon. When that time comes, I might consider $4.99 undervalued.

UPDATE: This is what I get for not checking the iTunes store before clicking the "Send" button. It appears that Feedly is still free as of this writing. Thanks to @blakedanner for pointing this out. To restate an earlier question, is it worth its current price in the App Store? Definitely. There's no reason not to try Feedly while it's free, and soon I think it will be worth much more.