Computerworld — If you're a Google+ user with an Android smartphone or tablet, here's a simple piece of advice: Download the Google+ Android app right now. It's so well-designed, simple and straightforward to use, you would have thought that Google (GOOG)+ was designed to be a mobile service from the beginning.

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(iPhone and iPad users now have their own app as well; check out "Google+ iPhone app: 5 things you need to know").

The home screen offers icons for all the most important parts of the service: Stream, Huddle, Photos, Profile and Circles. (Huddle is an extra that's not included in Google+'s Web interface; more about that in a moment.) Unfortunately, there is no Hangouts videoconferencing feature, which Google should consider adding in an upcoming version -- especially considering that many Android tablets and an increasing number of Android smartphones include a forward-facing camera for mobile videoconferencing.

Tap any of the icons and you'll come to a well-designed screen that manages to fit in most of Google+'s features without looking cramped. Tap Circles, for example, and you'll get a list of your circles; click on a circle and, by using tabs at the bottom of the screen, you can view a list of all the people in that circle, read all their posts or see their photos. You can also switch to a list of all of the people in all of your circles. An icon at the top lets you search for additional people to add to your circles. Viewing photos is similarly easy.

The heart of Google+, of course, is the stream of posts from people to whom you've connected. The Android app shows posts in a scrolling list, so it's easy to browse them -- you can read your entire stream or posts from a single circle. From the same screen you can also take a photo, create your own posts, and essentially do all the things you can in the Web-based version of Google+.

Extras for Android

The Android app even has a feature that the Google+ Web interface doesn't -- location awareness -- which shows that, in some ways, the Android app could end up being more useful than the Web-based service. When you're in your stream, you can choose to see posts only from people who are nearby you. It's surprisingly useful; in one series of posts a woman asked whether anyone near her had a bicycle pump for a specific type of wheel. Someone did and was able to help her, and the message stream ended up discussing good places for beginners to learn rock climbing in the area. It was an example of location-enabled social networking at its most useful.

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