Flipboard comes to the iPhone

Flipboard has shrunk down and reengineered its iPad magazine-reading app to create an iPhone version.

The app pulls together information from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, Google Reader, Flickr and 500px accounts to create magazine-style pages. These also include real-world news from a series of publishing partners.

“The iPad is an amazing device that challenged us to rethink how people discover and share social updates and news. With the iPhone we redesigned Flipboard for those times during the day when you’ve only got a few minutes to check in, when people want to find the things they care about even faster,” says Flipboard CEO Mike McCue.

“Flipboard for iPhone has been our number one request, and now this release finally puts all the power of Flipboard in your pocket.”

New with the iPhone version is Cover Stories, a section that, says the company, learns from a reader’s interactions with the content. It aims to provide some of the most interesting news, updates and photos being shared at that moment in a single place.

Thanks to the different form factor of the iPhone, the new version has a slightly different interface to the iPad app. While tablet users use a sideways, magazine-like flip to leaf through pages, the iPhone version uses a vertical flip, which can be done while holding the phone in one hand.

Because pages are stored as a ‘stack’, flipping betweekn pages is instantaneous. Users can tap a story to slide it open, and swipe back to return to where they left off. Instapaper or Read It Later can be used to mark stories to read later.

Flipboard for iPhone is available free from the App Store.