AndroidTapp. Android App Reviews, Android Apps, News, App Recommendations, Interviews

HuffingtonPost.com Official News Android App, Our Official Review

Posted Monday, July 25th, 2011 at 1:09 pm by Paul Wilks 0 Comments

No User Ratings Yet

The official Huffington Post app brings you all the news features and sections from the Huffington Post website. Regularly updated and easy to navigate interface, fans of the news site should be pleased with this comprehensive news application. There are a variety of reading and sharing options, in addition to lots of available content to browse through.

Price: Free

Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• Lots of content from The Huffington Post.
• Regularly updated.
• Ability to save and store in addition to being able to download all for later reading.
• Simple to navigate and color coordinated subheadings.
• Fast, intuitive interface.
• Links to Huffington Post YouTube videos.

Cons

• Sometimes the widgets seem to freeze or not appear distorted.

Features:

One niggle I have had in the past with news apps is lack of content. They simply have just the latest stories to read, in specifically dictated sections, and then nothing else. Want a story you read last week? No chance, as it’s been removed. The UK’s BBC News app was horrifically guilty of this. The Huffington Post app however delivers content by the truck load! There are a large variety of sections, that seem to carefully similar to the website itself. Each section is color codes so you know you are moving to a new section when the headings change color.

Thankfully the stories are updated regularly and you can get the latest news very soon after web publication. Again, this lets down some news applications who seem to lag behind in publishing content on their Android apps, but this is not the case with The Huffington Post app.

A great feature with this a is the ability to save stories for later reading, or download full sections to read offline. This is incredibly useful if you, perhaps, travel a lot and do not always have good network signal. I have found this feature in other news apps (such as The Independent) but it didn’t work properly. Thankfully Huffington Post bucks this trend and the download, for me anyway, was problem free.

Despite the stacks of content available, navigating to sections and stories appears fast and responsive. There is something incredibly frustrating about waiting for pages to load, despite the optimisation that an app brings to your mobile reading experience, so it was good to see that this app works well.

In addition to stories, there is are a number of links to the Huffington Post YouTube site for relevant videos. These loaded quickly and without blip; whether I was on WiFi. One serious issue I did notice, however, was a distortion in the content when displayed through a widget. The widget seems to freeze and not display properly. For people who like to snatch the latest headlines through their homepage widget might find this a real problem, although it detracts little from use of the main application itself.

I sometimes scour the Android Market to see if any issues exist beyond my own experience. My reviews are obviously based on my own personal, and therefore anecdotal usage, so it’s good to get other perspectives. There are a number of reports of force-closing in the comments sections on the Android Market but, despite using it regularly over a few days, I didn’t experience this. Another issue for many has been the intrusion of ads in the app. Again, however, I didn’t find this a problem and ads were discreet and unobtrusive.

Usefulness:

For fans of the website, this app is incredibly useful in keeping up to date with the sites content. As optimized, it is far faster and cohesive and experience than using the browser to view the site. There are various viewing options; such as increasing font size or changing the background color to make the reading experience more suited to personal tastes. The ability to save articles is also very handy.

Ease of Use:

I found The Huffington Post easy to use and very intuitive. The sections are color coded, so simple to navigate. The pages loaded fast so I wasn’t twiddling my thumbs waiting for stories to appear. The host of other features are accessible- although you have to look for some rather than it being obvious.

Frequently Used:

The app is regularly updated so, if you wanted to, you could be checking it the app numerous times during the day.

Interface:

The interface is clear, bright and functional. I think some people might find the default font a bit small but this can be adjusted in the settings. More general news feed apps; such as Taptu and Pulse perhaps offer a sharper and slightly richer reading experience, but The Huffington Post app works and performs well.

Updating...