A few months back I wrote about the free CNN application available through Handmark. An application that gives you a quick overview of today’s top news. There is a similar application available from Reuters.
The Reuters application is available as a download from their website or through Nokia content discovery. Being a news junkie I tried out both CNN and the Reuters application side by side.
The Reuters application is using Adobe’s Flash Lite technology. This gives the application and highly polished, glosssy look and feel. In addition, there are nice animations which make the application look modern and very high tech.
In comparison, the CNN application is more old school and is certainly not trying to impress with animations or a glossy look and feel. But both applications are good and provide similar services with a few differences.
The Reuters application is taking a much more cautious approach to data usage. The CNN application by default includes images for each article and also downloads the complete articles.
Reuters on the other hand doesn’t include images by default and only downloads a first page “stub” of each article.
After the first page you have to manually retrieve more when using the Reuters application. The photos are at the very end of each article. In order to retrieve them you also have to manually select this option.
These two approaches give a different appearance on the first page of an article. The CNN with an image and Reuters without.
If you are worried about the cost of data usage or are on a limited data plan, then Reuters is the application for you. You will have to manually retrieve more text and images but you can better control the data usage.
On the other hand if you are on a flat data rate or want the convenience of retrieving more information without manually having to select this option then CNN is a better choice.
However, no matter which application you choose, prepare yourself mentally for frequently having to allow both applications to use the network to retrieve data. You will get prompted more frequently with the Reuters application because of the limited download but you will also encounter the screen when using the CNN application.
If you use this application frequently this will get on your nerves. It’s the “are we there yet” phenomenon - you repeatedly have to tell the application that “yes, please go ahead send or receive data”. I wish the applications had a better memory so I didn’t have to repeat myself.
As far as I know there is no way around it. Each time the device starts it will ask for permission to access data. It is probably a Java limitation which prevents the application to remember access points and having to ask for permission to use data each time it is initiated.
Kudos to the excellent website Symbian Watch!
i dont like the cnn app. the news rarley updates. my last update was 12/11/06. any ideas?
Reuters is “not there yet”…
Mobile News pages:
mobile.reuters.com
mobile.newsweek.com
mobile.time.com
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/palmnews/main/list/1/.html
I surf them through “Web”. Saves on Ram usage, easy to load and lesser apps on my phone.
they both are useless apps. use the built in web feed and link to any (almost) RSS source and read to your heart’s content.
Nona
Nice app.—Not sure if this has been mentioned and if it has sorry for the repeat but I’ve been running two rss feeds on my E62. They both serve a purpose for me. Freenews is one and the second is wildpalm headline. I highly recommend both. They are amazing. Wildpalm allows you to copy and paste articles of interest. Freenews brings all the news to your mobile with out opening up your browser.
I’m a great fan of Reuters news and have been getting their e-newsletters for some time now. I’m happy to see they have come into the mobile world. This will be a very well-used app. Great find…
My E62 is filled with amazingly cool AND useful apps with most of them having been discovered through E-Series. Thank you again and great job Ed!
This is relatively new to the E series and added to the software catalog. Its nice but i still prefer the BBC’s PDA/Mobile version with the S60 web browser
Just spent some time using the Reuters app and it is surprisinly sharp and professional -looking. It quite fast too. I did notice that the app did not ask me to connect to an access point if I had a connection currently in use (e.g., connected to my e-mail accounts).
It’s true if you’re already using the RSS feeds then it’s almost useless, unless you really enjoy your Reuters news, as I do. It seems so uncluttered and simple in a professional-looking package. I just wish I had more room on my active desktop for yet another fave app that’ll get used plenty.
Review: Reuters News Application, written in Flash Lite, Ed beat me to it!…
For the past 3 days my cycle has been study, exam, come home, pass out! Looks like it got the best of me, Ed from e-series.org beat me to posting a review of the brand spanking new Reuters application. He…
I want both reuters and cnn. this can be?
Very interesting. This is the first time that I see a real application implemented using Flash Lite. Up until now, all the flash lite “applications” i came across were poor games no better than Java games.
I originally thought that Flash Lite would have the same fate as J2ME and only ever be used to develop crap, slugish, RAM hungry apps but it looks like it could be better than that. The Reuters app does start a lot faster than a Java app despite the E61 having only Flash Lite 1 installed, uses more RAM than a similar native application (around 3MB) but a lot less than Java apps (which force all the running applications to shutdown and use all the RAM they can) and is quite responsive. It doesn’t use the native UI controls though so it looks a bit weird. And unfortunately it asks for the access point for every article which pretty much kills it. Too bad.
The main problem with Flash application in general is that Flash designers are for some reason literally obsessed with animations and can help themselves putting silly, useless, time and CPU wasting animations all other the place. This shows in the reuters application and one can only hope that somebody will tell these Flash designers to grow up and stop trying to impress with these animations or Flash Lite apps won’t do any better than Java apps i’m afraid.
i like it but there are a few suggestions i made to them..things like the asking for a connection.. it should only ask you once.. the app should give you the option to run in the back and auto update like worldmate, and other little tweaks but overall im happy with it.. especially because of its nice glossy look
Ed… great review. Thanks for information.
I love the RSS feeds on default Nokia Browser (E61)….. can’t top that.
What’s the idea of individual news apps, when I get everything I want on one app by category.. be it finance, tech, sport, etc? I don’t get these guys and also those who would restrict themselves to single news source. Triangulation is my mantra to overcome propoganda and hear all side of the story
With OperaMini 3.0 Feeds option, I got rid of most of my RSS Reading s/w.
I had to give up the CNN App. Was just not updating itself. So its down to the Reuters app alone for me. Can see another who faced a similar problem with the CNN app. Any solutions?
This discusison prompeted a search on mobile news website.. came across a huge listing.
http://www.cantoni.org/palm/
I have been visiting this site a lot lately, so i thought it is a good idea to show my appreciation with a comment.
Thanks,
Jim Mirkalami
PS: I am a single dad.