Reuters News Pro – review of Official Android app for the international news agency
by Paul Wilks
Apr 13, 2012 12:25 PM –
Install
Reuters News Pro is the official app for the international news agency Reuters. Reuters is a source that takes its news very seriously. Don’t think you’ll find any fluffy pieces, Reuters is a highly professional agency and this is reflected in their coverage of international affairs, economics and politics. The app is very well developed and boasts several user-friendly features which make is a great app to use on a mobile device.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Great looking UI!
- Lots of financial, political and corporate coverage!
- Media section: including pictures and video!
- Contains view customisations!
Cons
- Few lags.
- No option to save articles.
- Lacks a home screen widget.
Features:
Reuters News Pro is a very professional and slick looking app. It has a really nice design and looks good to use. I did encounter some lagging but this issue aside, the app was extremely good. You are first presented with 5 tabs along the top of your screen: Home, News, Markets, Stocks and Media. Home features a series of subheadings which you view as you scroll down: Top News, Business, Science, Entertainment, Oddly Enough and World News. News includes the very latest articles as they are published. Markets gives you access to content regarding stocks, shares and economic data and stories. This includes news on deals, mergers, hot stocks and market reports. Stocks allows you to enter a company or stock symbol and monitor that share price, etc. When a company is highlighted you can access stock info, news and a company profile. Finally there is a Media section which hosts video content and picture galleries.
Overall Reuters News Pro looks incredible, the design and UI is very well produced; and reading articles, viewing video and pictures is a positive experience. I really like the design, layout and font. It makes it perfect to read on-the-go. The videos are typically high resolution and appear very polished. Picture galleries too look very good giving the app a very professional appearance and feel.
Reuters is an especially superb resource for regularly updated corporate information. From stock prices and up-to-the-minute economic news items to forecasts, interviews and financial charting. The app delivers all this with aplomb. I particularly liked the way you could identify, find, and follow stock prices and information of particular companies from within the app. These companies are saved to that page so you can view stock prices of your interested corporations on one scrollable page. It would be perfect to include a widget for these stocks, but it’s still good to see such a user-friendly means to monitor prices, etc.
One thing I really like to see within a news app is the ability to customise your view. In Reuters News Pro this is done very well and you can easily add and remove things from the Home section. You can increase or decrease the number of stories in a particular section. If entertainment isn’t you thing, or Oddly Enough doesn’t do anything for you, you can simply remove it and populate your Home page with whatever you like- or simply increase the number of stories in a particular section (you can go up to 20 stories).
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Reuters News Pro – Home view
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Reuters News Pro – In-story view
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Reuters News Pro – News section
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Reuters News Pro – Markets
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Reuters News Pro – Stock view, Google
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Reuters News Pro – Photo view 1
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Reuters News Pro – Photo view 2
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Reuters News Pro – Video view 1
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Reuters News Pro – Video view 2
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Reuters News Pro – Preferences
Usefulness:
I think Reuters News Pro is one of the best news apps for financial and corporate news. The Stocks section alone is a superb resource that not only lets you monitor stock prices but also read stories related to the company you follow. The news is regularly updated and it’s simple to follow breaking stories in the ‘News’ section. Reuters doesn’t really ‘do’ fluffy articles, even ‘Oddly Enough’ contains stories that are mildly quirky rather than silly. If you take your news with a side order of professionalism, this is the app for you.
Ease of Use:
There is a slight lag in moving around the app, which is a shame, but this aside the navigation is spot-on and it’s simple to use. You can’t save articles to read later but you can share- this means if you have an Instapaper client or ReadItLater on your device it an be saved here. Additionally, you can edit your preferences to pre-fetch content and photos which will limit the lag-factor a little.
Frequently Used:
The news is updated regularly so it’s easily something you can use several times a day if you wish. If the app had a widget included perhaps even more frequent than that!
Interface:
The interface looks great, very polished and superb looking interface. However, with the frequent lag it can be a little annoying if this kind of thing bothers you. It doesn’t bother me too much, but I know some people get very riled when apps lag. There is some here, but I don’t personally think it’s too bad.