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Flipboard Brings Stylized Social, Reading App to iPhone

The highly customizable app that cobbles together a gorgeous virtual magazine of your interests is now available on iPhone. Is it deeper than just its very pretty surface?

December 7, 2011

Flipboard, which curates content from your social networks and the Web based on your interests and turns them into stunning magazine-like digital pages, has released a version for Apple's iPhone.

The iPhone app is free to download, but it requires an account, also free. Upon launch, we at PCMag encountered some problems setting up new accounts, however, perhaps due to the Flipboard's servers being overwhelmed with traffic. (Flipboard later tweeted that its service went down "Due to high demand."

What Flipboard does is help you aggregate content from social networks, blogs, publications, and other online spaces, such as Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, fashion magazines, and newspapers, and curate it based on your interests. The new iPhone version contains a feature "Cover Stories for iPhone," which suggests articles and photos being shared with you right now and supposedly learns over time what you will and won't be interested in viewing.

Flipboard was originally designed as an iPad app and absolutely shines on the tablet, taking advantage of swiping gestures with both visual and interactive grace. In , PCMag software analyst Jeffrey Wilson praised it for providing an alternative way to browse the Web for news, calling its design "breathtaking" and noting how Flipboard's "use of photos and white space show the way forward for digital media."

As an iPhone app, one might worry that the comparatively cramped screen space might bog down the experience, but our first impressions are that design still reigns even on the smaller device. The usability and "flipping" motion of paging through the app are just as graceful and pretty as they are on the iPad version.

For more, see the slideshow below and .