Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Revamped Wikipedia app now available on Android

This was a draft for a blog post that has since been published at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/06/25/revamped-wikipedia-app-now-available-on-android/

Revamped Wikipedia app now available on Android

If you love Wikipedia and have an Android phone, you're in for a treat! Today we've released a revamped Wikipedia for Android app, now available on Google Play.

Our new app is native from the ground up, making it the fastest way to experience Wikipedia on a phone. For the first release, we've focussed on creating a great browsing and reading experience. Whether you're looking up a specific fact or looking to spend a day learning a new topic, our search and table of contents features get you to the information you need, quickly and intuitively. We're also offering the ability to edit in the app, so you can help make Wikipedia better for billions of readers around the world.

What features are included?

Speed - Our new, native app allows you to browse and edit Wikipedia faster than ever before.
Editing - You can edit Wikipedia on the app. Logged in or logged out, we thank you for all your contributions.
Recent pages - We provide you with your reading history, so you can tap as many links as you like without ever getting lost.
Saved pages - You can save select pages for offline reading and browse them even when you don't have a data connection.
Share - Use your existing social networking apps to share in the sum of all human knowledge.
Language support - The app allows you to seamlessly switch to reading Wikipedia written in any language.
Wikipedia Zero - We've partnered with cellular carriers around the world to provide Wikipedia free of data charges to users in many developing areas.

Coming soon

Night mode - We've gotten lots of great beta user feedback; one feature people love is reading Wikipedia in darker environments. The inverted colour scheme offered by night mode will make that much easier.
Discussions - Talk pages are an important part of Wikipedia for both new users and experienced editors alike. We're bringing them to the app.

This release is just the beginning! We're still working hard at creating new features to make the app the best Wikipedia reading and editing experience out there. Whether you're a long-time user of Wikipedia on Android or are brand new to the app, give it a spin and let us know what you think. This is just the first step; we hope this app will grow with us, and we're excited to have our community help us evolve it.

Please help us improve this app by leaving feedback here or sending a note to our mailing list, mobile-android-wikipedia@wikimedia.org.

Dan Garry
Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps

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