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Best News/RSS Reader Apps for Android and iOS

 

If you’re using an Android or iOS device, you should maximize its purpose by downloading news or RSS reader apps.  With easy access to mobile internet, information is available by a few taps on mobile devices.  Among hundreds of news or RSS reader apps in the Google Play store or Apple’s App Store, there are four that I have grown to like and have used regularly to check and read news, especially tech related updates.   Instead of going to each website to check updates, these news or RSS reader apps collect all updates for easy access.  These apps are free to download, so you should definitely try them out and share your impressions in the comments section.

gReader

gReader is an unofficial Google Reader client.  It synchronizes with your Google Reader, if you have one, and if you don’t you can use it if you have a Gmail account.  I like this app because it has a very simple interface, it’s fast, and it is practically unlimited with respect to the number of RSS feeds to follow.  The way articles are presented with snippets and thumbnails add to the gReader’s appeal.  There’s also an option for an all thumbnails view, which is nice but slows down the app a bit.  gReader is tablet optimized, although it’s still good on smartphones.  If you’re a Google Reader user, you’d appreciate gReader’s synchronization feature.  It synchronizes feeds, tags and shared items and also synchronizes read items between gReader and Google Reader.

Other nice features of gReader are Night Mode option, offline reading with full article content, voice-reading (text-to-speech), search feature, easy sorting by newest, by oldest, by feed and swipe actions.

 

Pulse News

This one should be an easy favorite for reading articles.  Pulse News has been around for quite some time now and a browser app has even been launched recently.  Unline gReader, Pulse is all thumbnails, with just the title shown below the thumbnails.  This looks best in tablets but it’s still good on smaller screens.  What I like about Pulse is the UI design and its smooth and polished feel.  It’s also very quick and as long as the articles have loaded, you can browse through them smoothly whether you’re online or offline.  I also like that recommendations for news sources are readily available.  The articles themselves are presented in easily readable style and for me this is what really matters.   The bonus part? It can also access your Google Reader account, so you can add your sources on Google Reader.

 

Flipboard

This one is meant for huge screens, but as the previous two apps, it works just as well on smaller screens.  Flipboard makes reading your articles something akin to an art form.  It presents web articles like magazine articles and the experience is quite fresh, yet it could get confusing for new users.  Flipboard is good for those who want their text big and those who like seeing more photos on articles.  Users navigates articles by flipping the screen up or down and like the Pulse reader, Flipboard is smooth, beautiful and simply effective.  What I don’t like about it is I cannot easily jump through articles the same way I can with gReader and Pulse reader.  News articles are not presented in thumbnails or snipes placed in one screen the way they are presented in gReader, and Pulse.  When you choose a category, you are immediately brought to the individual articles. But among the three apps featured, here, this is hands down the best looking.

 

Taptu

Taptu is like Pulse, but less polished and more cluttered. It works well as a news reader app and you should definitely check it out.  After all, the app is free.  What Taptu also offers apart from being a thumbnail-based news and RSS reader app is access to social feeds.  Taptu conveniently adds feeds from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, so if you are looking for that one app that can pull updates from your favourite sites and give you your social streams at the same time, Taptu is the app for you.

For me though, Taptu is too cluttered.  If I want access to my social feeds, I can easily use individual apps so there’s really no need for me to use Taptu.

 

The best app for me among the four apps featured is gReader.  It’s simple and straightforward and is also not bad when it comes to UI design.  Pulse News would take second place.  It has the sleekest and smoothest UI and the articles are well presented and easy to read.

All four apps are available on Android and iOS devices and they are free to download. Go ahead and try them out now. Feel free to share your impressions in the comments section below.

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