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SmartNews review: Great for both online and offline news reading

A newsreader that's already popular in Japan has finally made it to the US and is a great alternative to other popular news apps.

Jason Parker Senior Editor / Reviews - Software
Jason Parker has been at CNET for nearly 15 years. He is the senior editor in charge of iOS software and has become an expert reviewer of the software that runs on each new Apple device. He now spends most of his time covering Apple iOS releases and third-party apps.
Jason Parker
4 min read

SmartNews (iOS|Android) is a free newsreader that lets you browse the latest headlines across several different news categories with an elegant swipeable interface. It's also quick to load as you navigate each category, with all the latest news stories refreshing behind the scenes.

8.5

SmartNews

The Good

SmartNews makes browsing the headlines easy with an intuitive tabbed interface. You can read stories offline because of set delivery times.

The Bad

You only get a handful of news sources you can use as channels, but all major news sources show up as part of your feed.

The Bottom Line

With an interface that lets you browse headlines quickly, customize your channels and read the news offline, SmartNews is an excellent free alternative to other popular news apps.

SmartNews is already popular in Japan as it finds trending news stories based on real-time analysis of Web pages shared across social media. Now available in the United States, SmartNews is a great way to view the top stories in several news categories based on other users like you.

SmartNews offers an easy and efficient news reading experience (pictures)

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A great way to browse stories

Immediately upon launch, the layout of the app is extremely intuitive, giving you tabs at the top for each news category that you can touch or swipe left or right to switch among categories. The cool thing about SmartNews is that all the stories are already loaded, so even when commuting through the tunnel or flying on an airplane with no connection, you can still read all the stories from the last update.

In each category, stories are listed with a headline and small thumbnail, and you can scroll down to view more stories. Swiping between categories is incredibly smooth, with a page-turning animation and superfast load times because -- as I mentioned before -- the stories are all already preloaded.

You also have the option to enter your Twitter and Facebook accounts, but all that does is add a Social tab to your categories that gives you news stories shared by people and organizations you follow.

Categories and custom feeds

The first tab gives you the top stories trending right now, but there are also categories for Entertainment, Sports, Lifestyle, Tech, US News, World News and several others. SmartNews calls these categories channels, and you have a couple of different ways to customize them and their layout.

By swiping downwards, you can reveal the app settings (a gear icon) in the upper right. At the top of the settings list is Channel Settings where you can rearrange how the tabs will appear on your main screen and new channels from the sites you like most.

Below the Channel Settings is an Add Channels section. Here, you can sort available channels by featured, popular or broken out into categories. When you touch one of the websites offered, you'll see a quick preview of what it looks like and you can touch the add button to add a tab. When you add a channel, such as CNET, SmartNews will create the new tab on your main screen that just shows the top stories from CNET. Just like the other categories, your CNET channel will show headlines and thumbnails, letting you swipe to scroll through more stories.

The other option for adding a quick channel is to swipe all the way to the last tab and touch the plus sign. Here you'll find the same layout from the Add Channels section, but it's great when you just want to add a single channel for quick access.

News delivered to you

One of the best things about SmartNews is the ability to read everything offline, and the way the app does this is it "delivers" at specific times. You can set up three times a day when the app will deliver the latest batch. I set mine for 8 a.m., 11:30 a.m., and 6 p.m. This way, even if I don't open the app, it will have recent stories that were delivered at those times so I can read them offline.

When you launch the app, you can touch a refresh button to get all the latest stories, but these deliveries mean you'll always have something to read even if you move to a location that has no connection.

You also get notifications at these times so you know the news has been delivered, but you can turn them off in the settings under Delivery Settings if they get to be too much.

Not all sources are available yet

When you browse through the news normally -- say, in the Top News section -- you'll see stories from Reuters, CNN and several other major news outlets. But if you try to add many of these as a channel, you won't be able to find them.

I contacted SmartNews Inc. and it said the channels available represent publishers with whom it has formed partnerships, but it continues to talk to more publishers and expect the list to grow.

It's not a huge concern, because you already get news from all the major sources, but be aware that you won't be able to add many of them as their own channels.

Conclusion

SmartNews, with its behind-the-scenes refresh features, delivers the news across several categories that are incredibly easy to navigate. Swiping between categories is fast and convenient and the ability to read stories offline sets the app apart from most of the popular competitors.

As it is such a new app to the US, it doesn't have partnerships with all the news outlets yet, so you can't view sites like CNN and Reuters as individual channels, but you will still see those sources in your feeds.

Still, with offline news reading, scheduled news deliveries, and an interface that's a joy to use, SmartNews is a great free option for keeping current.

8.5

SmartNews

Score Breakdown

Setup 8Features 8Interface 9Performance 9