CNN for Android Phones & Tablets. An Excellent International News Application
by Jonathan Lonczak
Jul 12, 2011 10:31 AM –
Install
CNN for Android phones & tablets. Get the latest news, watch live video and iReport from your Android phone. Experience what happens when storytelling meets the latest technology with the new CNN App for Android – a smarter, sleeker way to experience a world of news and insights. Now available on all Android powered mobile phones and tablets.
Price: Free
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tablet, HTC Thunderbolt
Content Rating: Medium Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- CNN for Android provides extremely easy access to international and domestic news!
- Live video and audio streams from around the world!
- You can become a reporter with it’s iReport feature!
- This application sports an excellent minimalistic interface and widget which make it both easy to use and ideal for themers.
- Allows for news updates for breaking news!
- Profile feature allows you to easily find local news and weather!
Cons
- Only provides news feeds provided by CNN.
- Does not allow you to pick specific countries of interest and save them, instead you need to browse the international news by region.
- Does not allow caching of articles, videos, or audio feeds for time shifted viewing.
Features:
CNN for Android is the official CNN Application for Android Phones! It features both international and domestic news including: written articles on news from around the world, CNN Podcasts and Audio News Updates, CNN Live Video news reports, and iReports. It also features an excellent minimalistic interface and a widget to match it.
The app is one of the largest news distributors in the world and the Android application does an excellent job keeping you up to date with both international and domestic news. Offering news articles under various headings: Top Stories, U.S., Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Business, Sport, Tech, Entertainment, and Travel. This allows you to follow the news that is specifically relevant to you. For myself, I prefer to follow U.S. and Asia News because my girlfriend moved here from Thailand and I enjoy following the news for her back home; and of course I live in the United States making national news relevant to me.
After clicking on a category of news a list of news feeds will display underneath the news heading. Each article will show a picture along with the article heading so that you can easily identify articles of interest. I also love the minimalistic approach that the CNN application gives with it’s solid black background and white text with subtle and well spaced images making the application much more enjoyable to use and making it feel less cluttered and easier to read than it’s competitors.
The full news articles are displayed in the same minimalistic fashion. Images are displayed sparsely throughout the article with white text for the body of the article with a black background making it much easier to read. Articles are also updated periodically when new information is brought up on an article that is already posted. Once of the advantages of digital news is that it allows faster delivery and real time news updates for the reader, and CNN takes full advantage of this with their Android application.
CNN for Android also features the iReport feature. This allows ordinary people to upload their own stories to CNN.com. There are three headings under iReport: Featured, Assignments, and Submit. Featured iReports are reports that have been submitted by users and have been approved to be published by CNN.com. Assignments are writing assignments from CNN for those looking to submit stories through iReport. In this area of the application CNN asks the user to provide a story or footage of an event that is relevant and receiving a lot of attention in today’s news, such as the “Wildfires in the South and Southwest.” Finally, the submit feature is the portion of iReports where the user is able to upload their own story to CNN for review and publication.
The next exciting feature for CNN for Android is CNN Radio. CNN Radio allows you to listen to CNN Podcasts on the go, hourly news updates, CNN interviews, stories, and much more. This area of the application is also broken down by headings such as: Podcasts, Interviews, Stories, Favorites, From TV, and Updates. This allows you to easily choose the type of content you would like to listen to and then select a relevant audio news update from underneath that heading. After you choose a relevant audio stream the application loads it’s own audio player and begins to stream the news to your device. Since the news is streamed and not stored locally on your device you will need an active data connect to utilize this feature for the duration of the audio stream.
The app also features CNN Video which features live video news streams from across the globe. Like CNN Radio, CNN Video also breaks down it’s content into individual headings then allows the user to choose both the category of interest and the news topics that interest them the most. This is an excellent change of pace from some other news distributors which will only allow users to select from the most recent video news streams. Instead CNN gives the power of selection to the user. When playing a video article the application yet again launches it’s own video player and manages the video stream internally for a seamless user experience.
Finally, it features the option for a profile. However, this option is not for you to create your own profile for posting news in iReports. This is for providing you with local news and weather reports. The CNN for Android application will pull from your local news feeds and provide them to you through the profile portion of the application along with local weather reports. This allows the user to get all of the most relevant news for their location in one place within the application. I found this feature to be highly useful, though poorly named; as I did not open this feature until after using the application for more than an hour since I assumed it would have to do with setting up an iReport profile.
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CNN for Android Top Stories
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CNN for Android Headlines
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CNN for Android Headlines 2
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CNN for Android Article View
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CNN for Android Videos
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CNN for Android Radio Top Stories
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CNN for Android Radio Podcasts
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CNN for Android Menu
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CNN Radio Updates
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CNN for Android Options
Usefulness:
CNN for Android is extremely useful at keeping current with the latest news from around the globe. The application allows you to get news that is relevant to you in any format while the events are happening . The application is extremely well designed and easy to use. It also allows you to become a reporter and submit news stories that are relevant to you to CNN.com. This is one of the few news applications which tries to provide relevant news to the consumer and also allow them to become a part of the publication process. I think as technology progresses we will begin to see this become a new trend in news reporting and I am very pleased that CNN has decided to be a leader in this category with their Android application.
Ease of Use:
CNN for Android is extremely easy to use. All of the menus are laid out in a simple to understand fashion and the interface is extremely minimalistic which provides for an extremely intuitive and easy to read interface.
Frequently Used:
CNN for Android is probably my second favorite international news aggregator. I prefer News360 over CNN for Android because it provides me with news from many different sources including CNN. However, CNN has one of the best widgets for Android users that like to theme their phones and prefer a minimalistic style. It also provides excellent live news coverage of events which is something that News360 is lacking.
Interface:
The interface for CNN for Android is extremely easy to use and read. The only issue that I have with the application’s interface is that you cannot store audio or video feeds on your device for later use when you are not connected to the Internet. Currently the application requires a data stream in order to listen to audio feeds or news streams. The application should incorporate an option where the user can download audio or video feeds and be able to view them at a later date and time.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Tablet Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
CNN,
CNN for Android,
CNN for Android Phones & Tablets,
CNN iReport,
CNN Radio,
CNN Video,
iReport,
News,
News Podcast,
Video News
Categorised in: News & Weather
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