You have an Android phone or tablet, and you want to keep up with the various goings-on in the world – One way to do this is to download individual apps for various news sources, like The Guardian, The New York Times, or Al Jazeera. But there also a number of apps which curate news content for you, and these could be ultimately more useful. So here are ten of them.
Flipboard styles itself as “your personal magazine,” a sort of one stop destination for you to keep up with the news, follow topics that you’re interested in, and share stories, videos, and photos. Users follow a few topics, and the app uses this information to create a personalized magazine – with the ability for users to add new topics, news sources, and interesting people to follow. Among the publications it includes are The New York Times, People Magazine, and Vanity Fair; and there’s the facility for users to connect through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn so that they can go through pictures and posts from friends.
Flipboard allows you to manage all of your magazines on its dashboard, and gives users a feature called The Daily Edition, which features stories picked by their editorial staff. Flipboard also comes in 24 localised editions so you can see the local news that’s of interest to you, and on tablets you can explore the Content Guide – which features content picked by the Flipboard team.
NewsHunt
NewsHunt is among the top ten consumer mobile apps in India, and allows users to read the news, ebooks, and magazines in twelve different languages. It’s an app that brings together news from regional magazines and newspapers, offering support for 11 Indian languages even if your phone does not, along with global news sources. Users can get local news from more than 600 towns and districts within India, as well as things like cricket scores, the weather, horoscopes, classifieds, and stock updates – and you can set alerts and notifications so that you get the news even when not using the app. NewsHunt allows users to select both text size and background colour so it’s most convenient to read, and you can share news via SMS, WhatsApp, email, Facebook, or indeed any other social app which you have installed. Along with a large choice of regional publications, users can also download and read the largest collection of regional and English eBooks – many of which are free for users. In addition to this, NewsHunt users can read various magazines optmised for mobile, as well as single articles from them.
News in Shorts
News in Shorts is a news app which seeks to be a news reading experience which allows users to know it all without reading through all the news. It does this by providing users with short news stories intended to be read on a single screen, each news story being a compact sixty words or less. Professional news editors prepare news channels for News in Shorts, with both Indian and international news sources being searched for the best articles which are then condensed. News in Shorts’ News Reader feature allows you to read summaries of important news – everything from economic to political to sports news, allowing users to follow what’s going on in the world. The app allows users to either swipe for quick news parcels, or flip the screen to read the original full-length articles. But News in Shorts only provides news stories – no opinion pieces, no editorials – so users can stay in touch with what’s going on in the world. Users can also share articles with their friends, supporting email, WhatsApp, Reddit, and Hike, among others.
SmartNews
Smart news delivers news to users in an addictively simple app, which has an algorithm that analyses millions of articles per day to deliver trending articles from various US-based news sources. It’s optimized for readability, and has an interface which allows users to quickly browse headlines, customize channels, and even read the news while offline. So you can flip through headlines, click on an article, and even read it without internet access. And SmartNews can also use your current location to provide weather information and articles specific to your area.
World Newspapers
Apparently the top news app in Android Market, World Newspapers provides users with a directory of thousands of newspapers, magazines, and website – more than 6000, as a matter of fact. Users have access to news from over 105 countries, and can browse by country or category. There are facilities for bookmarks, favourites, sharing, and history – and users can even submit a newspaper. World Newspapers also comes with a feature for translating webpages, an RSS reader with offline reading, and Read it Later integration.
Google News and Weather
Google News and Weather is pretty much what its name would imply – a comprehensive and personalized selection of headlines and local news and weather. And it has coverage from more than 65,000 publications, with more than sixty country-specific editions. Users can also tap on any story for a wider selection of viewpoints and in-depth articles, as well as opinion pieces and local perspectives.
BuzzFeed
The BuzzFeed app allows you to stay up to date with what’s trending and viral – basically like BuzzFeed.com does. So now you can follow videos, images, links, and so-on while using your Android device.
Breaking News
Breaking News is a fast source for news from trusted sources, monitored by many of the world’s largest newsrooms, companies and governments. Users can see what’s going on around the world and locally, with the editorial team sorting through thousands of news sources as well as social media. With Breaking News, users can watch a live video from the scene, follow quick updates, pick topics to follow, get alerts on any story or topic of their choice, see breaking local news, see eyewitness photos and videos, hide unwanted stories, and get alerts for big stories nearby, among other things.
Fast News
Fast News is a quick and lightweight mobile newsfeed reader, which features the major newspapers from the user’s country – there are versions for Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Malaysia, the UK, and the USA, among others. So users can read headlines from major newspapers on their Android device, free of charge. Fast News is an RSS feed reader, but saves time by bringing users directly to the news without having to waste time playing with the interface – so users can stay up to date with what’s happening in their country, while using as little time as possible. It’s still in BETA, but Fast News is optimized for low-bandwidth usage and high download speed, and allows users to share news with their friends through email or the usual social media networks.
Reuters
Reuters delivers breaking news, analysis, and market data – and their app is no different. With the Reuters app, users can explore a seamless stream of content including articles, pictures, and videos on their Android device. Like a few other apps, users can customize their watchlist and it offers flexible access – so you have a choice between reading online or saving stories to read them offline later.
