Facebook has announced its own news app this week, which will pitch against already established stalwarts of the genre such as Flipboard and Google Currents. It promises a full-screen layout, from where you can pick your own topics of interests like science or photography. Facebook says the news will come from well-known sources as well as "emerging voices", and says that it will ensure trusted publications are easy to spot within the mishmash of information.
In this list, CBR picks out five top news apps already available on Google Play, try them all out and see which one suits you best.
1. Flipboard
You just can’t beat the sheer beauty of Flipboard, especially on a beautiful new Nexus 5. You can add to your profile what genres or sites you want to be in your virtual ‘newspaper’ and then flick through them like you would a real paper. It’s good-looking, useful, and even supports integration with your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. You can add stories to your own ‘magazine’ for later reading, and fetch story shorts for offline reading at a later time. I tried out a few news apps apart from this one, including Pulse, one this one just blows the competition straight out of the water, and the flipping animations on the powerful Nexus 5 make it a breeze.
2. Google Currents
Google’s own Currents app, which draws news from Google’s own algorithm, includes the top sports, entertainment, business and lifestyle sections. Popular magazine and papers are presented in a similar page turning format to Flipboard, and it’s all fairly high-quality stuff.
Currents uses a lot of Google’s features, like Google search as well as Google blogs and feeds and translation tools. All this can come straight to your Nexus 5 homepage courtesy of some nice looking widgets.
3. Baconreader
Are you a Reddit addict? Then Baconreader will be the app for you. If you can’t keep control of your Reddit addiction, Baconreader brings you a slick, intuitive interface for browsing the site. You get a news feed, inbox, account management, some widgets and a fairly decent search tool. All for the generous price for £free!
It’s quick, snappy, and the thumbnails for content looks great. It also gives you the ability to create new posts in picture, link or a self-reddit, all the choices are there. The app even embeds itself into the Android ‘share’ menu so posting a link is pretty simple.
4. LinkedIn Pulse
Originally Pulse before being acquired by LinkedIn, LinkedIn Pulse angered a few users last year when it was revamped, but now most of the problems have been ironed out and it’s now a strong news aggregator for general news and LinkedIn. You can scan headlines quickly and use the built-in suggestions for finding what’s relevant to you. The app also has a widget, so again, it’s easy on the eye and simple to use from your home screen.
5. Pocket
The perfect partner for your daily commute. Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later, is actually a short-term bookmarking app that handily syncs across all your devices. With the app, you can bookmark articles or videos and line them up for later reading offline. Excellent for those long tube journies.
You have to sign up for an account, but once you do, saving stories is really simple, and you can customise if full or partial web pages are cached too! So convenient.
