Google Reader Working on Android Browser and the Case of the Disappearing Web Pages

I've always been a big fan of Google Reader for reading blogs both on my computers and my mobile devices. Google created a very nice mobile version of Google Reader for the iPhone's browser a couple of years ago. This is the Google Reader you encounter when you use Android's browser to go to Google Reader. Unfortunately, this version of Google Reader has never worked well with my T-Mobile G1. It always seemed to leave read items marked as unread. As a result, it would refresh and present you with the exact same items that you had already read. This unfortunate bug made Google Reader unusable on the G1. So for reading blogs on the G1 I would use an older version of Google Reader. This version of GReader was nice and fast but it was clearly made for dumb phones and older devices like my old PalmOS Treos and Palm TX.

I decided to try the newer mobile GReader again after my G1 received the over the air update to a new version of Android (yes, this another post about Cupcake). I'm not sure if it was the new OS or if Google just fixed it while I was away but the new GReader works very well on my G1 now. It is fast and it is available from a drop down menu on the web browser's default Google home page. Unlike the older reader which links original posts to a mobile phone optomized page, the newer reader links to the original full post. With a more modern browser like the one in the G1 this is more appropriate and thanks to the Cupcake update it handles full web pages better than ever. So it looks like one longstanding pet peeve I had with my G1 has been fixed.

But another problem may have emerged. While I was waiting on line to play with the Palm Pre this morning, I was playing with my G1 with several web pages open in the browser. I was given a demo model of the Pre to play with and decided to compare the two phone's web browsers. But when I opened up my G1's browser, the only page open was the default Google home page. All the other pages had mysteriously disappeared! This has happened again at least once today and I have no idea why....