Top 8 News Reader Apps Android

There are many different ways to keep up with the news these days, and in many more convenient ways than simply going to your local newsstand and buying a newspaper or magazine. While it has always been fairly typical of people to buy even a handful of newspapers or magazines to get a full helping of the news in a daily fashion, today people want it all now and in one place. Fortunately, there are a range of apps available for smartphones and tablets that look to do just that. All the big newspaper and magazines these days have their own official app, and will have gained a huge following – perhaps even encouraging some of their readers to give up print (which many refer to as a dying medium) in favor of checking out the news each day via an app. I’m a big fan of the third party apps that look to pull news articles from different sources and place it all in a single context, for I feel that they give a much better overview of the news that can be catered to your own personal interests. With this in mind, we take a look at the best news reader apps for Android!

8. Google Play Newsstand (Free)

Google Play Newsstand is worth mentioning from the get go, mainly because it replaced what was Google’s primary newsreader app for the Web, Currents. Also, their Magazines app. Both of these were discontinued in favor of Newsstand, which acts as almost a route to the latest news rather than a personalized news reader app. Still, as with everything Google touches, its a great interface to navigate around and is an excellent source for all the latest news, even if the personalized touches of similar apps are not present here.  – Download from Google Play

7. Circa News (Free)

Circa is one of the more recent news readers on the block, and the basic premise behind it seems to be the idea of condensing news stories into bite size, digestible chunks that make it easier to peruse briefly. In this sense, an app like Circa would be much more suited to someone who likes to run over the headlines related to their interests each day over a morning coffee, perhaps, but doesn’t have the time or the willing to sit down and really read through articles. This is why the home page for Circa (seen above) is so generous with its previews for each article, meaning that you can get an idea of the news at a single glance of it and don’t even need to read too much into each artcle. – Download from Google Play

6. Zite (Free)

Zite is one news reader app that I’ve been using for a while, not just for the latest articles but also to keep up with RSS feeds from my favorite cooking blogs, for example. I didn’t realize it but it seems that Flipboard recently acquired Zite, so it will be nice to perhaps see some kind of integration between the two in the near future. – Download from Google Play

5. Digg (Free)

I first came across Digg a while ago, but had no idea that it has advanced to the point of being one of the premier news aggregating portals on the web. The brand has also advanced around the world, and was recognized as one of the best services to bring together news to suit you, even before all these apps and news readers came along that want to do the same thing, only on mobile devices. Digg’s app is the perfect reflection of the site’s own complexities, with a predominantly black and white color layout that looks to confine colors to the images found in the article in question. All in all as solid news reader app that doubles as an RSS reader, but then we wouldn’t expect anything else from a brand like Digg! – Download from Google Play

4. Pocket (Free)

Pocket is worth mentioning as one of these save it for later apps that understand that many people will come across interesting articles when they don’t have the time to browse them. Bookmarking is easy enough, but Pocket is almost like an interactive bookmark library that can be synced to all your devices and platforms and then used to store articles for later reading. So no matter where you are or what device you are using, you know that all of your saved for later reading material will be immediately available at the tap of a screen. – Download from Google Play

3. Flipboard (Free)

Flipboard is something of a personalized news reader, but leans more towards the magazine format than it does the grey and stripped down layout of a newspaper. The basic idea behind Flipboard is to digitize the fantastic layouts we often find in magazines, but to do so on a mobile interface – then to have that interface actively react to the person who is currently using it. While Flipboard is a wonderful experience on smartphones, it really comes to life on tablets where the layout can be glimpsed in all its glory. Again, the app pushes customization and personalization, meaning that you have to teach the app of your reading tastes and interests, then slowly build your own personal magazine which will be then filled with relevent news each day! – Download from Google Play

2. Press ($2.99)

Perhaps the best thing about Press as a news reader app is that it was developed specifically for Android devices. It’s certainly one of the more sophisticated and comprehensive news readers out there at present, and supports a huge range of different third party RSS services including the likes of Feedly (below), so if you have an RSS feed set up you can quickly and conveniently import it and spend more time reading and less time setting up! This also syncs as well as imports, so that any changes made to you RSS feeds will be reflected immediately in the app. As looks go, it’s actually quite a subdued aesthetic: the idea is to strip away any kind of distracting interface and replace it instead by a simple background and simple text to make the reading area less cluttered. – Download from Google Play

1. Feedly (Free)

The fact that so many of the readers listed so far tend to support Feedly shows just how influential it is these days as an RSS service. Thankfully, the app itself is a good reflection of the service it offers and it’s our opinion that you should pick this one over the others. Since the demise of Google Reader, many users have taken to Feedly as their choice RSS reader, especially when it comes to consuming a variety of news each day. The interface is stripped down in the same way we saw with Press above, but is a lot more easy on the eyes. It also supports a range of different platforms, including Android and iOS but also the Web, meaning that you can essentially set up your Feedly RSS feed with the Feedly app and then take in your news each day no matter what device you are using! – Download from Google Play