App Geek has been offering up a selection of the best tech news available on the Internet for years now, and it’s pretty fair to say that they’ve gotten good at it. With Appy Geek, users can simply select from both topics broad and specific in order to quickly build up a personalised sort of magazine of tech news. As well as the standard tech news categories, you can also add specific topics like “Android M”, and follow the latest news on those topics.
Major tech news sources from all over the web are included, and all articles & photos are displayed inside the app. You never have to click to view articles on the web. Neat features like the Tag Cloud and saving articles for later make Appy Geek one of the best ways to experience tech news on either your Android smartphone or tablet. It’s completely free to use and it’s not just English-speaking countries that are available here, as Appy Geek services the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Russia, LatAm, China, Mexico, Canada, and India. Appy Geek has been delivering quality news to people all over the world for years now, so let’s see what all the fuss is about.
Today, we start running a contest with Appy Geek, for all our International readers to enter. The prize is a Galaxy S6 Edge and if you want to enter or find out more, just click here.
As with most Android apps, you’ll need to download Appy Geek from the Play Store. From there, you can get started with the simple setup process.
If you already have an account with Appy Geek, you can easily log back in and see your personalised news. I have an account, but for the purposes of this review, let’s go through the setup process.
All that’s needed is to tick off a few boxes of the topics that you like. Some of these are fairly broad, but some of them are quite focused, like topics dedicated just to brands like Sony or topics like Bitcoin. Once you’ve chosen your selection of news, you can choose to sign in with one of your social accounts to have these choices saved for a later date, I strongly recommend doing this, as it makes using Appy Geek on multiple devices – your tablet, for instance – much easier.
After completing the setup, Appy Geek takes you to the main view of three different columns. The main column is of course the “My Topics” view, which is an up-to-date overview of news stories from all the different topics you’ve shown an interest in. To add personalised topics to your Appy Geek, like the “Android M” example used above, just hit the plus button found in the corner.
Appy Geek’s Digest feature, which can be accessed by swiping to the right, features an overview of the most popular stories from your chosen topics. This sort of thing is great for the morning or just when you get home from work.
Last but not least is the “My News” section. This is less of a mix than My Topics is, and presents more of a focused run down of stories that you might be interested in.
Appy Geek makes it clear how suited they think each story is to you through a short and sweet little icon system that they happily explain like this:
Exploring Appy Geek a little further, and we can see that the article layout is both detailed and yet clutter-free. One of the nice things about Appy Geek is that each and every news source is treated the same, and if there’s a site with particularly heavy ads, Appy Geek presents a way to enjoy that content without having those ads get in your way.
Speaking of exploration, the Tag Cloud is a neat feature that you can access from one of the buttons at the top of an article. It presents a sort of cloud of tags, that you can manipulate with your thumb, each tag is related to the topic you’re reading at the moment.
When you click a tag, you’re taken to a look at news with matching content:
Like reading news at night? Not a problem, Appy Geek has a really nice night mode available as well:
There’s a lot on offer here, and a nice addition for those browsing the news on their lunch breaks is that you can save articles for later, allowing you to easily queue up things for the commute home or later on.
The whole app is neatly navigated from the left-hand side of the app.
Of course there are Appy Geek’s trademark rating features that allow people to express their reaction to an article.
Appy Geek has been around for a long time now, and it’s with good reason that they are still considered the number one source for all tech news. With a simple setup process that requires very little thought at all, a simple syncing process that allows users to quickly restore their articles and topics from whatever other device you might have as well. Appy Geek neatly and prominently makes sure each news source is represented for their work, and everything is easily laid out and the whole app is nice and smooth performance wise. Discovering something new to read is not difficult when using Appy Geek,and there’s so much content on offer here it’d be more accurate to say what can’t you find here. All-in-all, I found it to be an excellent news source, and it’s a much more enjoyable way of reading content without having to spend time messing around in your mobile browser or anything like that.
Ratings
- Speed (4.5/5) – Appy Geek is both quick to get setup and quick thereafter, I never had any issues with loading content or using the app itself.
- Features (5/5) – Without doubt, Appy Geek is the best way to get your technology fix no matter where you are, and all of the extra features on top of the excellent discovery and such really help Appy Geek stand out and look the part.
- Theme (4/5) – This is a good-looking app with some smooth transitions, good font choices and an excellent night mode that happily does the job.
- Overall (5/5) – Appy Geek is packed full of features, and it’s such a breeze to use that it’s a wonder tech fans would use anything else. It’s not just the usual suspects of tech sources that are listed either, and everything is easy to find, easy to read and quick to setup.
Pros
- Offers a neat sync feature that makes importing your topics and articles a breeze when changing devices or whatever.
- Night mode, save articles and more all add little pieces to the overall puzzle that make Appy Geek great for everyday use.
- Works without issue on both smartphones as well as tablets, and there are no issues with performance at all.
- Has hundreds and hundreds of different sources available, whom are all well represented when reading articles, to provide an excellent variety of news to read.
Cons
- Photos gallery doesn’t link to the article it was taken from.
- Breaking news alerts do seem to be behind the times a little bit.
Appy geek continues to show everyone else how its done when it comes to creating a news app. It’s so easy to use, it’s quick and it has every feature you could want, without all sorts of fluff you don’t want. It’s down-to-earth in its approach and the team clearly knows their users and audience very well, as nothing is taken too far and all of the features implemented are well thought out and offer meaningful additions.