It sure took a while, but Reddit has finally released the closed beta of its Android app, which will soon be followed by the iOS version.
Back in September 2015, a Reddit administrator teased users with a screenshot of how the app would look like. This time around, only the people who signed up and got selected for the beta can take a gander at the app – or so Reddit thought.
Apparently, a copy of the .apk file of the app was uploaded to APK Mirror, which has now been taken down for confidentiality reasons. Even though it went offline immediately, the damage has been done, and screenshots of the app have made their way to the Internet.
Android Police got ahold of them, and from the look of things, it has the whole shebang of functions, including organizing the front page, editing subreddits, navigating through subreddits, upvoting and downvoting, commenting, submitting a post, collapsing comment threads and many others.
Design-wise, it looks great. Everything seems to have been placed in the right spots, and the developer appears to have thought about the color scheme well. In other words, it's easy on the eyes. As for opening images, it uses an in-app browser that'll just open the website of the image's source.
On a positive note, it comes with a night mode, compact view, the option to blur or hide NSFW posts and other settings to improve the user's Reddit experience.
It should be noted that this is still in its development stage, so it may not seem much compared with the third-party Reddit apps on the market. Still, it's shaping up into one heck of an app based on the screenshots.
For the record, signups for the beta are now closed. Also, there's still no word on an official release date.
In other Reddit-related news, some big update are about to roll out in 2016 for every redditor, according to the CEO of Reddit Steve Huffman.
"This year will see a lot of changes on Reddit. Recently we built an A/B testing system, which allows us to test changes to individual features scientifically, and we are excited to put it through its paces. Some changes will be big, others small and, inevitably, not everything will work, but all our efforts are towards making Reddit better," he says.
According to Huffman's post, Reddit is going to become even better starting this year. He mentioned that a couple of wrinkles have been ironed out, including cleaning up the website's Content Policy, Privacy Policy and API terms, to name a few.
Moving forward in 2016, he also says that the phrase "look forward" will be used often at Reddit.
Before wrapping things up, I was fortunate enough to get selected as a beta tester, and I currently have the app right on my smartphone. However, I can't disclose too much information because of the Trusted Tester Terms, but I will release more details of the app when Reddit gives the go signal or when the software goes official.
Photo: Eva Blue | Flickr
