There are news apps. And then there is Pulse. This one does it with some class, show and pomp. Completely customizable as far as content is concerned, and it can pull in content from about 20 sources at the same time. Social networking capabilities also added to enable sharing.
Interface
There are the inevitable straight comparisons between this and Flipboard, but unlike the latter, Pulse is more of a news aggregator rather than have strong roots in the social networking sphere. The dark coloured theme does bring out the visual appeal, thanks to the large images that accompany every headline. Once you open a story, there is literally no visual effects at play here, with all the focus on reading.
Features
Pulse can pull news from about 30 sources, divided according to genre. You can completely customize how the news appears to you, and what sources get the priority. There are multiple “pages” that Pulse lets you populate with content of your choice.
Also, the Pulse.me service lets you sign up and bookmark stories for future reading. Once you sign up, these bookmarks are saved to your account, and can be accessed on any device once you sign in.
Performance
The speed of refresh and loading of news articles will depend on the web speeds, but we did notice that the app refused to pull images for some stories even after a couple of refreshes. Closing the app and opening it again solved this problem. It isn’t a big annoyance, but slightly weird.
This app had been facing criticism for not having Facebook and Twitter connectivity, but that has come, with time. You can now share links from within the app on both these social networks now.
Weirdly, there is no manual configuration for selecting how much data you can download for offline use. It will save whatever you have already read, but text only and no images.
Our Take
For its minor niggles, the Pulse app does what it is supposed to do, very well. The amount of customization that you can do ensures you get info from whatever content sources you want. And the bigger the display size, the better this app looks. We think this is the best news app around, and suggest you give it a try.
Price: Free to download
Specs:
News aggregator app, available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, Facebook and Twitter integration
Ratings
Features: 7.5
Performance: 7
Build: 8.5
Value: 7.5
Overall: 7.5