Up until recently, the quality of iPhone news apps was pretty weak. While the apps for the New York Times, ABC News, and AP Mobile News supply solid news content, each has major flaws that make their iPhone-optimized website versions a better choice. There is, however, one standout app, USA Today (free, iTunes link). Its quick interface, impressive graphics, and extensive feature set make it the best news app in the App Store.
While USA Today may lack the in-depth news and Pulitzer-winning writers as the distinguished New York Times, it does a good job of turning daily news into quick and easy-to-read bites, and maybe that’s why its style works so well on a mobile phone.
The USA Today app is fast, which is surprising because it showcases an extensive feature set and some slick graphics. Stories are browsed like most iPhone-optimized news sites by scanning just the headlines and the first few lines of text of an article. Tapping a headline will expand to show the entire article.
I especially like how USA Today handles pictures. When a story has an accompanying photograph, only a thumbnail is displayed. This helps speed up downloading while still letting you know there is an accompanying photo. You can tap the picture to expand it, and it will also show the photographer’s name and a caption.
Another favorite feature of mine is the current temperature and weather graphic in the top right corner. It’s the sort of convenient, minimalistic, at-a-glance information that should be displayed on the iPhone’s own status bar, but for some reason hasn’t been added quite yet.
The headlines are divided into categories, which you can scan through by dragging a tab left and right. Similar to the newspaper version, the app covers Top News, News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech, and Travel.
There are also tabs along the bottom of the app that offer sports scores, weather from The Weather Channel, interesting news photographs, and snapshots. The sports scores are probably the most disappointing feature, as they do not gives stats or any other information about the games, just the scores. Weather shows current conditions as well as a 5-day forecast, and also a neat national weather map, but we recommend using The Weather Channel‘s own iPhone app for more detailed weather information.
Another surprisingly cool feature is a section called Snapshops, which is really just a bunch of poll questions. One you vote, you can browse the results, with votes broken down to national as well as your local state and city levels. Want to know how many people claim to pay off their credit card every month? Tap the Your City tab.
The Pictures section is also neat, as it allows you to flip through the day’s interesting photographs in a manner similar to the iPhone’s default Photos app. If you want to know more about each photo, you can bring up a caption that shows the story behind it.
Conclusion
USA Today has the unique distinction of being a light, quick, and easy-to-use app that is also extensive in its feature set. You can use the app to quickly grab the headlines, or you can interact by viewing weather radar maps, voting in news polls, and viewing the best recent news photographs. Whatever your choice, USA Today delivers an intuitive and eye-pleasing interface perfect for a mobile enivornment.
Name: USA Today
Developer: USA Today
Version Reviewed: 1.0.2
Price: Free
iTunes Link: 