Sports Eye – Soccer, Sports News Aggregate App for Fans

by Paul Wilks May 16, 2011 3:00 PM – 3 Comments

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Sports Eye – Soccer is a sports news aggregator that specialises on soccer (football in the UK). Users can specify sources, choosing to select players of interest, blogs and news sources. There is also fixture lists, past scores and league tables. The app itself is nicely developed and navigation is effortless and relatively fast.

Price: $0.99

Tested on: HTC Desire HD

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

Nicely presented application.
User interface is smooth, easy to use and intuitive.
Good options to share stories.
Handy widget.

Cons

News sources are limited and not the best places.
Extremely limited number of players to choose from.
Bizarre choice of players to follow.
Strange choice of news sources.

Follow the thrilling game of soccer/football on your own Android phone. Get latest updates from famous football/soccer news sources, expert opinions through top blogs and live scores at your fingertips. Find what your favorite football/soccer players are up to by following them, track your favorite football/soccer team in ranking tables and find upcoming matches through various schedules provided by the app. Share the updates with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and through email and SMS. Aggregated headlines are only links to the source website.

Features:

Sports Eye – Soccer is a smart and well designed application that aggregates various soccer news sources to bring their top stories. There is a great idea in featuring blogs, rather than just the news sites. This is good because it recognises the role the blogging community plays in sports news and the value they bring to the sport. The ability to follow specific players, teams and leagues is also useful.

User can also look up league tables, past scores and upcoming fixtures. There is also a great Twitter feed function that follows the various soccer related Twitter feeds.

However, there are number of things that are really strange about the application. Firstly the news sources themselves are not really the kind of sources genuine soccer fans would use, especially in the UK. I guess FIFA.com (the website of the world governing body of soccer) is a news source but no fan will genuinely use this to keep them up to date with the game. The same can be said for Reuters. Reuters is a fantastic, award winning global news resource, but as far as soccer goes it’s hardly their speciality. The app, when you look for league tables and fixtures, utilizes the BBC and Sky Sports for this information. With these sites you have a huge resource of current soccer news of good quality, yet they are not among the options for news sources. It just left me scratching my head in confusion. The blog idea is great but the choice of blogs is very limited, and again, not the kind of blogs real soccer fans would read day-to-day.

The limited number of players you have to follow is also very strange: the likes of Messi, Beckham, Rooney, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Iniesta, Torres, Gerrard are fine, but Ryan Babel? Johan Djourou?? I am a huge soccer (football) fan but even I had to look Djourou up. He plays for Arsenal in the English Premier League and despite being there since 2004 he has only played a mere 80 games. So I cannot fathom why he is included in such an illustrious list. It’s really strange.

It’s a shame the stories highlighted in the app are just links which take you to their respective websites. This makes for a clunky experience as your browser opens and closes between stories. It would be significantly better if the app could aggregate the whole story into the application.

My fear with this application is that the developer doesn’t really know much about soccer, and has subsequently just added the news sources that he/she ‘thinks’ are the ‘top’ sources without actually researching what soccer fans might want. It renders the application a genuinely diluted user experience.

: Sports Eye Soccer Menu

: Sports Eye Soccer news feed

: Sports Eye Soccer Welcome

: Sports Eye Soccer Player news feed

: Sports Eye Soccer Instructions

: Sports Eye Soccer Wealth of sharing options.

: Sports Eye Soccer Twitter Links to website

: Sports Eye Soccer Twitter authorisation for sharing

: Sports Eye Soccer Tick boxes to select news sources

: Sports Eye Soccer Stories link to website

: Sports Eye Soccer Schedule sources

: Sports Eye Soccer Player selection

: Sports Eye Soccer Player selection 2

: Sports Eye Soccer Basic news widget

: Sports Eye Soccer Options

Usefulness:

The platform of the application is great, and being able to search for specific players and leagues, etc. is really good. From this perspective it’s really useful and potentially a great app for soccer lovers.

Ease of Use:

The in-app transitions are fast and easy to use and navigate. The user experience is let down however by having to open the browser for every story you read. I have a fast browser and good Wi-Fi speeds but it still renders the application clunky to use.

Frequently Used:

The news updates regularly, so in theory this is a daily-use application.

Interface:

The UI is smart, clear and good to use. The only let down is when you have to leave the app in the browser. The home screen widget is handy yet hard on the eyes to read.

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating! (3.5 out of 5)

Should you Download Sports Eye – Soccer? This is a great idea- being able to aggregate all the relevant soccer stories you want straight to your phone. The UI and layout is good too, the platform this app provides is really good. eXcelarz have developed a number of other sports apps with similar format, and for me, this should result in a rich user experience. Unfortunately though two main things let it down. 1) the choice of news sources are really limited and not the sources a real fan would use. 2) the app provides links, not aggregated stories, so you must open your browser each time you want to read a story. This makes for a frustrating user experience and makes the application feel clumsy.

I really like the concept behind this application and I hope the developers can make a few minor changes which will make this into a top sports news app. Until then I can’t recommend download because as it is, it’s a disappointing experience if you want high quality soccer news.

Developer: eXcelarz Interactive

Tags: Android App, Android Apps, AndroidTapp.com App Review, News, Soccer, Sports, Sports Eye - Soccer, Sports Eye - Soccer. football

Categorised in: Lifestyle, Sports

3 Comments

By PhilH on May 16, 2011 at 5:14 pm:

You could check out SportMate – https://market.android.com/details?id=net.mdtec.sportmate – just football for now but will be adding other sports. Not the finished article yet but frequent updates with new functionality each time. Free and ad-free.

Reply
By eXcelarz on May 17, 2011 at 11:00 am:

Thanks Paul for a great review. Your comments and suggestions are of vital importance and we’ll definitely going to improve our app quality in light of your critical analysis.

We’ll add more sources, improve the widget and will be incorporating the news view within our app instead of opening the browser.

Thanks a bunch!

Reply
By Dan Abrey on May 20, 2011 at 8:12 pm:

It would almost be better if the list of news sources was limited to a few main ones (Sky Sports, BBC Football, ESPN etc.) and then a “Add custom feed” button were present.

The layout is nice enough to get away with being a mere shell for a user to create their own football news app around it.

Reply