Readers Hub: Magazines

The last Readers Hub feature is Magazines, which is powered by the very popular Zinio - Now, since I already have this app on our iPad, it was just a matter of logging in on the Readers Hub one, and there was the magazine I just bought a subscription of :)

Anyway, opening up the Magazine part of the Hub first shows that it is powered by Zinio, after which you get to a list of all the magazines you've bought, and a few free ones are included by default as well:

I've subscribed to our local Popular Mechanics, a big favourite of mine! Best part is, it costs about the third of a printed subscription, and that's me doing my part on saving the environment as well!

Paging through the magazine is once again as simple as tapping on the edge, or swiping as if turning a page. The nice thing is you get the exact same copy as the printed one.

While paging through the magazine, you'll see the pages at a glance, and then you simply double tap, or pinch zoom to the area you'd like to read:

The app also, of course, includes the various ways of browsing the online stores of magazines, and there's A LOT! You have your normal categories, and stuff like "featured", "new arrivals", "top sellers", etc.

Browsing a category gives you all the magazines, from where you can tap on the cover of the magazine, and from there you can decide how you'd like to buy it, either a single issue, or a subscription.

I personally prefer doing the buying through Zinio's website. This way it gets added to your phone automatically, or wherever you're logged in on your Zinio account.

I'll do a purchase through the phones app at some stage, and amend this review on how that goes...

To summarize - the Readers Hub application that comes with the Samsung devices is in my personal opinion really nice. There are some dedicated software that might be better at the various sections (that is Newspapers, Books and Magazines) - but for normal use the Readers Hub is more than sufficient.

At the time of writing this, I've only had my Galaxy S2 for a month or so, so as always, as time goes on, I'll use the apps I review more and amend the reviews where needed.

In the meantime, if you've got a Samsung device, and haven't checked out the Readers Hub, you better go do it, even if it is just to drool over the fancy cars, watches an yachts  in the free copy of  Robb Report!

Till next time!