One of the best things about the iPhone is being able to keep up with the latest news while on the go. If you’re a sports fan, you’ll want the latest scores too. You’d think there’d be a million great apps by now to pull down sports scores and news, but choices are still pretty slim. We’ve taken a look at six apps for sports scores and news, and our two Editor’s Picks are Sportacular and ESPN ScoreCenter. Check out the reviews below.
Sportacular
Rating: 8.8 out of 10
Sportacular (free, iTunes link) is a our top pick for gettings sports news and scores on the iPhone. It’s fast and easy to use, its interactive features are fun, and a recent update added push notifications. And, the notifications can be configured so you won’t get spammed. Our one complaint about the app is that its graphics and interface need a redesign, as webapps are calling, and they want their style back.
Sportacular‘s interface prioritizes scores over other information. The first screen you see upon launching is the day’s scores. If a game is in progress, tapping on it will bring up live coverage. Once the game is over, the app shows a game summary along with tabs that allow you to see more stats like boxscores and play-by-plays. You can also browse to previous days’ scores.
The app added push notifications in a recent update, and it’s one of the best implementations of the service I’ve seen in an iPhone app yet. The notifications are highly configurable, letting you choose from various levels of alerts, from receiving only a final score to being a updated every inning (or quarter) of a game.
Sportacular has two fun interactive features: Facebook Connect and My Picks. Facebook Connect simply allows you to chat or make smack talk with other Facebook users about during games.
The My Picks feature lets you vote on which team you predict will win. You can view votes by overall total or broken down my region (to weed out the hometown bias). The app stores a personal history so you can see just how horrible you are at picking winners.
Vote on who you think will win the game.
Although not pretty, Sportacular does a good job of gathering headlines and excerpts from various major news sources like SI.com, ESPN.com, Yahoo, etc, and presenting them in an easy-to-scan format. Tapping on a headline launches a browser window within the app and loads the article from its original source. The only downside to this method is it can be slow.
Conclusion: Sportactular isn’t the prettiest of apps, but it’s easy to use and has several unique features, including push notifications, that distance it from the competition.
ESPN ScoreCenter
Rating: 8.0 out of 10
ESPN ScoreCenter (free, iTunes link) is the best-looking and polished of the sports apps. It mainly useful for getting quick scores of games, as the only news appears in the form of a news ticker at the bottom of the screen. The scarcity of content is disappointing from a sports giant like ESPN. We are waiting anxiously for them to release the ESPN Alerts push notifications app that was shown off at the March 2009 iPhone 3.o preview event.
ScoreCenter‘s priority is on scores. A scoreboard is the first screen shown upon launching. Scores for only one sport are shown at a time. To view other sports, you must swipe your finger across the screen in an interface similar to how the Palm Pre uses “cards” to switch between applications. An options menu in the app lets you change which sports are shown and their order. For example, if it’s football season, you can rearrange the order of cards so that football scores are the default view upon launching.
Tapping on a game brings up more detail. If the game is live, the app will show a summary of live stats. From there, you can go to ESPN’s MobileWeb GameCenter, which offers even more detailed play-by-play coverage.
A news ticker at the bottom of the screen scrolls headlines. Tapping on a headline launches a browser window with the full article. However, that is the only way to access news in the app. There are no videos in the app.
Conclusion: ESPN SportsCenter is easy on the eyes but lacking in content. If all you want is easy access to the day’s scores, it’s a solid choice.
Fox Sports Mobile
Rating: 5.0 out of 10
Fox Sports Mobile (free, iTunes link) has a barebones style that seems more worthy of a web app than something you’ll want to download onto the iPhone. The focus is on news, as a list of articles is the first thing that pops up. But even that is done sparingly, with only 8 news stories for each topic shown at a time with no way to retrieve more.
Also featured in the app are videos and scores. Like the articles, the number of videos is limited, with only around 5 available at a time. The videos are also kind of worthless, as they are not daily news stories so much as tiny featurettes. And the user interface could use a little polish: selecting a video causes the app to seemingly freeze for a few seconds without any indication what’s going on.
Scores are displayed in a ho-hum manner with a basic white background and very little graphics to speak of.
Conclusion: Fox Sports Mobile is an average app in just about every way. We recommend taking a pass.
CBS Sports Mobile
Rating: 6.0 out of 10
CBS Sports Mobile (free, iTunes link) is one of the better-looking sports apps, but that’s about all its got going for it. It’s slow, buggy, and filled with poor design choices. It could be one to watch though if they fix all of its issues, as it offers an impressive range of information, including news articles, scores, videos, and, in what should be a killer feature, access to CBS Fantasy sports.
The app has a weird interface glitch that occurs whenever you select an article or score to view. Instead of the item you’ve selected becoming highlighted, the whole screen seems to indicate its been highlighted instead.
Overall, the app has a long laundry list of problems. Scores are buried in submenus. It’s not economical with screen space, as too much precious real estate is taken up by menus and ads. The quality of its news coverage is not bad, but the app only loads 4 news headlines at a time.
The app offers full access to your CBS Fantasy Sports team, which should be a killer feature if it was reliable. I tried several times to edit my lineup over a period of three days, and it worked only once.
Conclusion: CBS Sports Mobile‘s slick graphics can’t overcome poor design and a horribly buggy interface.
Sports Tap
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
SportsTap (free, iTunes link) might as well be a web app for what little work that’s gone into its interface. Its one saving grace is push notifications, but the notifications are spammy and you can’t edit the type of information you receive.
Other than notifications, the app is unremarkable in every sense. The app’s home screen consists of icons for the major sports, and tapping them brings up either a barebones scoreboard or even more icons for individual leagues (eg, English Premier League, MLS, etc). If you scroll down from the scores, you’ll find top headlines, news, standings, league stats, and more. The news is standard fare from Sports Network (see the ScoreMobile review below for our complaints about Sports Network).
Conclusion: SportsTap offers spammy and unconfigurable notifications, an amateurish interface, and bland content.
ScoreMobile
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
ScoreMobile (free, iTunes link) offers barebones sports news and scores. It has a no-frills design that, while delivering content in a economical manner, is also quite dull. Its interface is cumbersome to navigate, with many features buried in levels of submenus.
The app supplies a news feed from Sports Network, but the news coverage is somewhat bland, only offering news blurbs with no in-depth reporting. The articles do not feature photos. There is also no video in the app.
Conclusion: ScoreMobile is an also-ran for iPhone sports news apps. Don’t waste your time.