Hands On: Fluent News Reader for iPhone
There are several options for getting the news on your iPhone, from various RSS readers such as Google Reader to news apps put out by major publications themselves (i.e. New York Times). These range in complexity from basic, easy to use apps to the less user friendly types which overload you with too much information. If you’re looking for one of the simple persuasion you might want to check out Fluent News.
Fluent News, from Fluent Mobile is really a mobile content aggregator, pulling in news stories from multiple sources which have mobile optimized content and gathering it all in one place for you. Since the content is already in mobile format it reads easily and with little adjustment on the iPhone screen whether in portrait or landscape mode. The interface is simple, clean, and easy to navigate, but somehow uninspiring. The word plain comes to mind, but that may not be an issue for people who just want efficient news reading, and really, who doesn’t want that?
As you can see the news stories are presented from multiple sources and according to Fluent Mobile they apply, ‘content relevancy algorithms to organize and prioritize the most important stories’. Fluent News is free in its basic form and ad supported. The ads are only semi-intrusive and appear interspersed between news stories in the listing (in my experience there was an ad about every 9 news headlines). You can follow up on many headlines with a tap of the Related Stories button if present which brings up additional coverage of the piece from different sources which is nice if you want to get a different viewpoint on a particular story.
From the Sections menu you can navigate to any number of built in subject areas of news, much like you would find in a newspaper. U.S. news, World, Sports, Weather, it’s all there. In addition to these the free version will allow you create three custom sections by searching for a topic of your choice and saving the search. The Pro version allows an unlimited number of custom sections.
All of the news sources are predetermined and built into the app and there doesn’t appear to be a way to add your own sources, which may be a turn off for some people looking for the flexibility of an RSS reader. The news sources used are, of course, quite numerous resulting in a wide array of coverage and will probably be satisfactory for most users. Fluent Mobile says they will be adding more sources down the line.
When you bring up a story the top menu bar auto-hides to maximize screen real estate for reading, and it can be brought back with a tap of the screen. From the menu bar you can return to your previous screen or easily access the sharing options. If you find a news story you want to share with friends you can do so via Facebook, Twitter, or email. I found the sharing process quick and painless, shooting an interesting story to my Twitter stream in seconds! If you’re running short on time and find a story you’d like to come back to you also have the option to save it for later reading, although it would be nicer to have some integration with Instapaper in order to access saved stories elsewhere such as the home or office desktop. Perhaps this will be a later feature.
One of the more novel features of Fluent News is the implementation of news sources filtering in the settings menu. Using three position sliders you can turn off a news source altogether or opt to see more from it. In the free version users are only allowed to filter out one source and/or maximize one source, but an upgrade to Pro gives you total control over any number of sources.
Premium access can be purchased in 1 month or 3 month intervals and eliminates the ads along with the other benefits listed above. It’s not very flashy, and startup is quite slow, but once the app is open it’s very responsive and a breeze to use. All in all Fluent News [iTunes link] is a solid news app for the iPhone, recommended for anyone seeking basic news coverage from a variety of sources.
