Fox News iPhone App Review
About.com Rating
The Good
The Bad
Purchase/Download at iTunes
The Fox News app (Free) wasn’t around when we wrote our review of the best iPhone news apps a few months ago. Now that the news organization has finally released an app (what took them so long?), how does it stack up against other heavyweights like AP Mobile, CNN or The New York Times?
The Good: News alerts and lots of videos
On first glance, the interface of the Fox News iPhone app looks rather plain. Unlike MSNBC, whose colorful app has lots of flashy graphics, Fox decided not to go for color or glitz - the design is subdued and simple. This makes it easy to navigate. The top bar scrolls between the various news sections, including Politics, World, Entertainment, and Health. The bottom navigation bar includes tabs for videos, slideshows, articles, and shows.
The Fox News app supports push notifications, so you’ll receive alerts when there’s a big breaking-news event. A number of articles include picture slideshows, but some failed to load. You tap the thumbnail picture in the article to launch the slideshow, but we got a blank page with a caption a few times. A better way to view photos is to go straight to the slideshow tab, where we had no problems viewing content.
The video section on the Fox News iPhone app is also quite good. Streaming live news events was no problem, and those videos loaded in only a few seconds over 3G.
The video-on-demand section, which includes popular stories as well as excerpts from shows like Fox News Sunday, is another highlight. The app also includes videos from popular Fox News shows, like Glenn Beck, The O’Reilly Factor and Fox & Friends; most include a handful of segments from the most recent show.
The Fox News app includes weather information, which is convenient - it’s nice when you don’t have to launch two apps just to get the temperature and latest breaking news. The temperature for your city is displayed in the upper left-hand corner.
The Bad: Little glitches add up
When it comes to the news itself, the articles load quickly, but the coverage could be beefed up a bit. Many articles are from the Associated Press; we'd like to see more original reporting. The last time we launched the app, there was only one article under the Top Stories tab. There are more articles under the individual sections (U.S., World, Politics, etc.), but even then some stories are listed more than once.
We also noticed a lot of weird formatting issues - articles with missing quotation marks and “&mdash” written out instead of a punctuation mark Those aren’t huge issues, but it gets annoying when you’re trying to read on the go.
The Bottom Line
Fox News has a decent iPhone news app, but it still needs a little work. There are a few too many small glitches, including slideshows that won’t load and formatting errors in most articles. Fortunately, these are all easy fixes. Fans of Fox News will love the video coverage, which is one of the highlights of this news app. Overall rating: 3 stars out of 5.
What You’ll Need
The Fox News app is compatible with the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. You’ll need iPhone OS 3.0 or later.
Purchase/Download at iTunes
The Good
- Breaking news alerts
- Extensive video coverage
- Customized weather information
The Bad
- Glitchy
Purchase/Download at iTunes
The Fox News app (Free) wasn’t around when we wrote our review of the best iPhone news apps a few months ago. Now that the news organization has finally released an app (what took them so long?), how does it stack up against other heavyweights like AP Mobile, CNN or The New York Times?
The Good: News alerts and lots of videos
On first glance, the interface of the Fox News iPhone app looks rather plain. Unlike MSNBC, whose colorful app has lots of flashy graphics, Fox decided not to go for color or glitz - the design is subdued and simple. This makes it easy to navigate. The top bar scrolls between the various news sections, including Politics, World, Entertainment, and Health. The bottom navigation bar includes tabs for videos, slideshows, articles, and shows.
The Fox News app supports push notifications, so you’ll receive alerts when there’s a big breaking-news event. A number of articles include picture slideshows, but some failed to load. You tap the thumbnail picture in the article to launch the slideshow, but we got a blank page with a caption a few times. A better way to view photos is to go straight to the slideshow tab, where we had no problems viewing content.
The video section on the Fox News iPhone app is also quite good. Streaming live news events was no problem, and those videos loaded in only a few seconds over 3G.
The video-on-demand section, which includes popular stories as well as excerpts from shows like Fox News Sunday, is another highlight. The app also includes videos from popular Fox News shows, like Glenn Beck, The O’Reilly Factor and Fox & Friends; most include a handful of segments from the most recent show.
The Fox News app includes weather information, which is convenient - it’s nice when you don’t have to launch two apps just to get the temperature and latest breaking news. The temperature for your city is displayed in the upper left-hand corner.
The Bad: Little glitches add up
When it comes to the news itself, the articles load quickly, but the coverage could be beefed up a bit. Many articles are from the Associated Press; we'd like to see more original reporting. The last time we launched the app, there was only one article under the Top Stories tab. There are more articles under the individual sections (U.S., World, Politics, etc.), but even then some stories are listed more than once.
We also noticed a lot of weird formatting issues - articles with missing quotation marks and “&mdash” written out instead of a punctuation mark Those aren’t huge issues, but it gets annoying when you’re trying to read on the go.
The Bottom Line
Fox News has a decent iPhone news app, but it still needs a little work. There are a few too many small glitches, including slideshows that won’t load and formatting errors in most articles. Fortunately, these are all easy fixes. Fans of Fox News will love the video coverage, which is one of the highlights of this news app. Overall rating: 3 stars out of 5.
What You’ll Need
The Fox News app is compatible with the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. You’ll need iPhone OS 3.0 or later.
Purchase/Download at iTunes
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