Google Currents branched out beyond the US on Wednesday with its 1.1 update for Android and iOS . The curated news app now reaches worldwide and has both translated US publications and local publications. For non-native content, Google Translate has now been woven into the app itself and will optionally convert between any one of 38 languages.
Syncing has been given its own significant update. Rather than load all at once, each “edition” only loads content as it appears, automatically, when in a full online mode. Readers can choose to mark certain editions for offline reading and cache them for a long flight. Google estimates that syncing is now about seven times faster.
Both the Android and iOS versions are universal and reflow to fit either smartphones or full-size tablets. They respectively need Android 2.2 and iOS 4.0. Although accessible in virtually all countries, the local trending content is limited to Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US.
